‘I can’t thank you enough,’ said Matthew. ‘This is absolutely perfect. I can’t believe it.’
‘It’s our pleasure,’ said Belial flatly. ‘I should warn you, however, that we do charge a fee for this service.’
‘Of course, I quite understand. That’s fine.’
‘Perhaps you misunderstand me. The fee is quite substantial.’
‘I’m sure it’s fine. How much is it?’
‘Half a million pounds sterling.’
Matthew was blown away. He asked Belial to repeat the figure, but he had heard perfectly. Belial’s words were unmistakable. He wanted to believe Belial was joking, but he knew he wasn’t.
‘Half a million quid? For producing a few bits of paper? You’re joking. I could get a whole set of accounts made up at a printer’s for a few hundred.’
Belial’s eyes were on the far end of the stadium, where there was some stirring amongst the travelling Leeds fans. Black-coated policemen were moving to the scene.
‘You could go to a printer’s. The forgery will probably be obvious immediately, but it will certainly be obvious if your boss bothers to check with us. Your boss, or the Stock Exchange, or your partner, or the Fraud Squad. Or whoever you are seeking to hide the truth from. If you do not accept the fee, then we shall tell the truth to whoever makes an enquiry of us. If you accept the fee, then the full resources of Switzerland International will be deployed to corroborate your story. The choice is yours. Personally, I’m quite indifferent.’
The melee at the other end had abated, but the police presence had noticeably thickened, like the fog.
Matthew felt violently sick. The freezing air felt oppressive and there was a rushing sound in his head. Half a million pounds. That would leave him with about seventy thousand, round about one quarter of his last legitimately earned bonus. Matthew felt faint and put his head between his knees. He thought he would vomit.
He sat out the ten minutes of half time racked by waves of nausea, but not indecision. Belial’s trap was perfect. He could send Matthew to jail with the tiniest effort. He could also save him with an equally small effort and with complete certainty. If half a million was the price, then Matthew would simply need to pay up.
The players came out on to the pitch again, and took up their formation. Before the whistle blew, Matthew tucked the envelope into his pocket. He was chilled to the bone and damp with it.
‘It’s a deal.’
‘Yes. You may rely on our complete support. We will deduct the funds from your account at the commencement of business tomorrow.’
Matthew nodded. His father’s millions had evaporated beyond reach. The whole effort, the lying, the fear, the whole desperate battle had been worthless. He stared blankly ahead into the fog.
The second half of the match made the first look scintillating. Tackle after tackle thudded heavily into flesh while the ball scampered away ownerless. Seven more yellow cards were given, and two players, one from each side, were sent off for second offences. A fist fight broke out among four of the players, but was unseen by the referee who was chasing an infraction at the other end of the pitch. For some unknown reason, the Leeds manager took off the only player in his side who had come close to scoring and brought on instead another defender with a reputation for toughness. More scuffles broke out amongst the fans and the police surged in once again.
Belial was thrilled with the way the match was going.
Every clattering tackle, every yellow card, every sign of aggression delighted him. He leaned forward, his face contorted with pleasure. The Arsenal fans lining the North Bank had long given up hope of a goal and contented themselves with yelling insults at the referee and everyone with anything to do with Leeds. One player was struck on the head by a missile thrown from the stands and came off the pitch to get medical treatment. Matthew had had enough of Belial’s entertainment.
‘Thank you for the documents,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’m going to make my way home now.’ Belial turned in surprise.
‘Leaving already? Just as the game’s warming up? Oh - of course - pardon me. You’re feeling upset about our little fee. Perhaps I should have waited till the end of the match before mentioning it.’
Matthew had started to leave, when Belial plucked at his arm.
‘If you’re really upset about that fee, I know an excel lent way for you to recoup the money. It’s remarkably swift and easy.’
Matthew sat back down. little as he liked or trusted Belial, he had to hear this. Belial’s attention drifted back to the game. Another player knocked to the ground by a late tackle, another caution, another wave of booing from the crowd. Another free kick, incompetently taken. Belial’s lips were parted in pleasure and flecks of spittle hung in the comers of his mouth. The game resumed and he turned back to Matthew.
Belial explained his idea clearly and effectively. He sounded as if he were making a business presentation to a trusted client. In fact, he was making a completely illegal and outrageously dangerous suggestion to a man he scarcely knew. The depth of Belial’s willingness to associate himself with crime once again stunned Matthew. There was not a flicker of emotion, not even excitement in his face as he talked through his proposal. Matthew left immediately afterwards, while the game was drawing to its ugly close. As he left the turnstiles at the exit, another wave of booing hinted at another foul. He made his way rapidly to the tube station. While most fans stayed till the bitter end, a few had left early like Matthew. They hung about the empty streets in groups, avoiding the lamplight, dark as clots of blood. At the far end of the road the first fight was breaking out, to a tune of breaking glass. He hurried away.
Belial’s idea was mad, wrong and dangerous, but Matthew couldn’t get it out of his head. Whenever he closed his eyes, he could see Belial’s twisted face grinning at him.
‘Have you heard of vault duty?’ it asked.
Spring 2001
You know the feeling, everyone’s had it. Maybe it was an exam, or a speech, or dinner for your girlfriend, which you left too late. You were busy doing other things, then you looked up to find that time had caught you napping and left you for dead. The months of revision had to be crammed into weeks. Your plans for duck’s breast a la tickle-my-fancy flew out the window, and instead you were opening tinned vegetables and swearing at your freezer for the wonderful food it didn’t contain.
Three young men named Gradley have that feeling now. None of them has his million. None of them has anything that vaguely resembles a million, not unless you count it in roubles. Their father’s fortune hangs plump and heavy on the tree, but it won’t hang there for ever. It is 5 March 2001 and there are 130 days until Bernard Gradley’s deadline.
The feeling’s gut-wrenching and it never leaves. You must know it. Everyone’s had it.
1
There are lots of ways to make money in this world.
One old-fashioned technique is to make things. You buy something that folks don’t want, say wood, then you turn it into something that they do, say tables. Then you sell the things you’ve made and use the money to buy more wood. Next time, you try to make your tables a little better and a little cheaper and you aim to sell a few more. You do that each year, until by the time you retire, you are making and selling an awful lot of tables, your profits are fat and you are the toast of your local Rotary Club. The annual challenge cup at the local golf club bears your name and your wife is named president of the village horticultural show.
Recently, other techniques for making money have been invented. Instead of buying wood and selling tables, for instance, you can buy companies, fix them up and sell them. With the profit you’ve made, you can go and buy a bigger company, fix it up and sell that at an even larger profit. You can go on doing that until you’re buying companies worth several billion, and making profits of a billion or more on each sale. There are disadvantages to this way of doing business. People tend to dislike you, for one thing, and nasty things are written about you by an embit
tered and envious press. On the other hand, you are now happily retired in your twelve-bedroom home on Mustique, your mistress living quietly nearby, or perhaps you have your own island somewhere in the neighbourhood. In those parts, people tend to ignore the spiteful chatter of journalists. And if it really bothers you, you can buy your own newspaper to set things straight. You wouldn’t be the first.
What kind of businessman was George to be? For most of his life he had assumed he would be a third type of individual, namely the type that inherits money from his dad and passes his life finding ways to spend it. Then, since his father’s death, George had begun to think he might be a businessman after all: the first type, who makes things and sells them, makes things and sells them. But now Ballard had put an idea into his head. If he sold Gissings for a couple of million, and claimed his father’s estate, who knows what he could on to achieve? Gradley Plant Hire Limited was still there, in trust, making money but in need of leadership. None of the three brothers had given the company a second thought. They’d assumed that if they collected under Gradley’s will, they’d flog the company and keep the money. But now George had another dream. What if he became his father’s successor? If he’d turned around Gissings, which was extremely unpromising material, what would he be able to do with Gradley Plant Hire? On the other hand, if he sold Gissings to a bunch of hireand-fire Americans, what on earth would Val think?
George clasped a beer in the seventeenth-century coaching inn and waited for his guests to arrive. Under his chair, behind his legs, a fat briefcase pressed into his calves. It was to see that the contents of that briefcase that David Thurston and Kelly O’Shea had flown in from the Cascade Mountains of distant Oregon. Would he recognise them, he wondered, as he sipped his beer.
He needn’t have worried. The old oak door creaked admittance to two newcomers, a man and a woman. He was tall, fit, clean-cut, tanned, perfect teeth, perfect suit, crisp white button-down shirt, dark red tie. George knew from the sight of him that he worked out, had quality time with his kids, ate a low-fat, low-salt, high-fibre diet, attended church on Sundays, and played a mean game of golf. And as for his partner - well, she’d have turned heads at the Oscars. She, too, was tall, fit, tanned, perfect teeth, perfect sand-coloured suit, crisp white shirt - plus, she had the face of a movie star and the billowing auburn hair that usually only lives in cosmetic ads. George didn’t need to ask to know that she graduated with honours from a good Ivy League school, that she believed women were entitled to careers and kids, that she jogged every morning, and was up with current affairs and probably flossed her teeth too. George stared like a street kid at a peepshow. Then he shook himself. He could recognise them, but they had no way of distinguishing him from the other jacket-and-tie Yorkshiremen in the bar. He rose and went over to the two Americans.
‘Mr Thurston? Miss, I guess I mean Ms O’Shea? I’m George Gradley.’
‘Hey, George, nice to meet you,’ said Thurston, gripping George’s hand like something in a gymnasium. ‘Please call me David.’
Thurston quit mauling George’s hand, which wasn’t delicate but still felt ragged. George turned to Kelly O’Shea. Close up, she was dazzling. George went weak at the knees, in a way he hadn’t done since he was fifteen. She took his hand. It was a firm grip for a woman, but next to Thurston’s, it was rose petals.
‘Kelly O’Shea. Pleased to meet you,’ she smiled at him.
Her smile lingered for the amount of time prescribed by the best business schools: use your assets, but respect yourself; don’t flirt.
They took their places at the table. George’s briefcase still sat beneath him. Inside were management accounts, statutory accounts, tax filings, product brochures, customer analyses, cash flow forecasts, design prototypes; everything. A waitress came to take their orders. George ordered shepherd’s pie and another beer. Thurston asked for lasagne with a big mixed salad and orange juice. His partner asked for the same but with mineral water.
‘So, George, you have a pretty nice business, we hear,’ said Thurston with a perfect smile.
‘I hope so. We’ve put in a lot of work over the past couple of years. Brought the company back from the brink.’
Thurston nodded, like a therapist listening to some childhood trauma.
‘That must have been a whole lot of hard work, right? But pretty satisfying, I’ll bet.’
‘Do you mind?’ asked O’Shea as she got a portable computer from her bag. ‘I put all my notes on here now.’ She laid her mobile phone beside the PC, ‘In case I need to download stuff from head office.’
‘Go ahead,’ said George. ‘First, maybe, you could tell me a bit about Oregon Furniture and your interest in coming over to Britain.’
‘Sure, George, I’d be glad to do that. Have you had the chance to review any of our corporate documents? Annual report and review, corporate profile, our “what the press says” brochure, 10-K filing, 10-Q? You’ll see they each carry our mission statement on the inside cover.’ Thurston began to lay a bunch of glossy brochures one on top of the other in front of George, who leafed through them aimlessly. Thurston began to recount the company’s story, from its humble beginnings to its current dominance of a swathe of the US furniture market. ‘Our research indicates we have the opportunity to replicate that success in Europe, and that’s why we’re here, George.’
At this point, the waitress returned with the orders. Thurston’s orange juice came from one of those irritatingly small bottles they still serve in pubs, poured into a wine glass over a rapidly melting ice cube. The mineral water was similarly small and warm and the mixed salad wasn’t mixed enough, or green enough, or something, for Thurston. He began to give rapid instructions to the waitress on how to remedy the situation. She listened wide-eyed and dived off to get her manageress, who listened impassively as Thurston explained what he wanted. To pass the time, meanwhile, O’Shea gave George a smile which made his knees wobble. ‘David’s very particular,’ she explained, then frowned as some one at a next-door table lit a cigarette.
As Thurston’s attention returned to the matter in hand, George took charge of proceedings.
‘How much do you know about Gissings?’ he asked.
‘Not nearly enough,’ smiled Thurston.
George dragged out his briefcase and started to stack his own piles of documents on the table. ‘I didn’t know exactly what you wanted, so I copied the lot,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything additional you want, then you should ask, and if we’ve got it, you can have it.’
Thurston’s hand hovered over the pile. ‘Did you want us to sign a confidentiality agreement?’
George was thrown by the question. ‘Er, no, that’s OK I mean as long as you’re not going to post this stuff on the Internet or something,’ he said nodding at O’Shea’s computer.
‘Ha, ha, ha! The Internet!’ Thurston laughed, and nodded at O’Shea who laughed as well. The laughter was careful, like the laughter of missionaries. ‘Very good, George. The Internet! No, seriously though. You’re quite right. We take business integrity very seriously. It’s right up there on the mission statement. We won’t misuse this material, you have our corporate word. Right, Kelly?’
‘Right.’
Thurston’s hovering hand dived into the pile. He began identifying the documents in the pile and Kelly began to tap the titles into her computer. The waitress returned with the orders as amended by Thurston. The manageress stood behind her in silent support.
‘This is the freshest orange juice you have?’ he asked. Waitress, manageress and George nodded.
‘OK. Fine then. Thank you.’ He sipped it, as though testing for contamination, but it appeared to pass. The mixed salad was still the same mixture of iceberg lettuce, supermarket tomatoes and cucumber, but it had grown to fill a large mixing bowl and Thurston passed it without comment. George happened to catch O’Shea’s eye and she wrinkled up her eyes at him, flashing him another my-dentist’s-more-expensive-than-yours smile. Her auburn hair tumbled in cas
cades down on to the gleaming white collar of her blouse and shone there like coils of copper. George dug into his shepherd’s pie and burned his tongue.
Lunch proceeded with a detailed examination of the documents George had brought. Thurston and O’Shea were both very complimentary.
‘You’ve lifted sales a long way in a short time,’ he said.
‘And good margin improvement too. Nice!’ she said. They looked at the product brochures.
‘Nice design concept,’ he said.
‘Yes, really neat,’ she echoed. ‘Like our own Blue Mountain range, isn’t it?’
They passed on pudding. There was no decaf coffee available, so Thurston ordered a herb tea which the pub by some miracle had available, while O’Shea risked a normal coffee.
‘We can take these documents away with us, can we, George?’
‘Sure.’
‘That’s great.’ Smile. ‘Get us crunching numbers early, eh? This is really very interesting, very interesting indeed.’
O’Shea leaned forward. ‘Tell me, George, why are you keen to sell now? Not that I think it’s the wrong thing to do - not at all - I’m just interested in your motives.’
‘Quite right,’ said Thurston. ‘We’re sure you’re doing the right thing. The industry’s consolidating fast. Economies of scale, one-stop shopping, retail power, national marketing. Things are going to get tough for the little fellers, right, Kelly?’
George shook his head. ‘Gissings is doing just fine. It’s got years of profitable growth ahead of it as an independent manufacturer. I’m not selling out of fear. I’m selling because I want the money. That’s all.’
The Money Makers Page 48
