The Money Makers

by Harry Bingham

  ‘Sarah!’

  ‘May I come in?’

  He nodded, not able to speak. There was only one chair in the room and Zack thrust it at her, himself sitting knees drawn up on his untidy bed. They stared at each other in astounded silence.

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ he said. ‘Is it ... ? Is it ... ?’

  ‘She’s ours, Zack. That’s right.’

  ‘And ... do you ... I mean, have you ...’ He couldn’t finish.

  ‘I’m not sure why I’ve come. I was passing, so I thought I’d drop in.’ She stopped. ‘But I do know that this child would be better off for having a father.’

  ‘But Sarah, you can’t ... you can’t want me after what’s happened. Find someone else for heaven’s sake. Someone who’ll be good to you.’

  ‘Is that what you want?’ she asked in a whisper. Zack’s mouth worked, but no words came out. He felt that, if he only had one last wish on earth, it would be to protect Sarah against the worst of all fates, that of being married to him. But now it came to the point, his mouth was unable to form the words that would save her. His lips struggled soundlessly, till he gave up and shook his head.

  Sarah stood up. Her belly billowed out, the largest thing in the room, the centre of the universe. Inside was life; tiny, wriggling life.

  ‘Zack?’

  ‘Sarah!’

  He was holding her now, desperate to kiss her, but not kissing her.

  ‘If you want, we could try working something out.’

  He nodded dumbly.

  ‘Just for a trial period.’

  He nodded again.

  ‘I suppose you’ll want to go on living here?’ She shivered. It was March and the attic wasn’t insulated or heated.

  ‘I suppose so, but -’

  ‘Good. Then you can live here during the week and we’ll see each other at weekends to begin with. See how that goes. You can come up to London or down to Ovenden House if I’m there.’

  ‘But your father ... how will he feel? Maybe I should stay out of his way.’

  ‘If you want to work something out, you’ll come to Devon. My family will let you back in if I do.’ Zack nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘So it’s agreed?’

  ‘Yes, my love. Agreed.’

  4

  And Josephine? She is a rich woman now, but that doesn’t mean that the cares of the world have left her. She has given up her job, of course. There are worse things in the world than being a settlements clerk and a well-liked one at that. But, all the same, there aren’t many settlement clerks who own three quarters of an expanding company worth fifty million quid or more, and Josephine isn’t minded to break the rule.

  So she’s a free woman. She always assumed she’d go to university, and perhaps she will. She can afford to choose a subject that she’s interested in and pursue it for its own sake. Afterwards, whatever kind of work she does - if she chooses to do any at all - she can do also for its own sake. Will she be an active chairwoman of Gradley Plant Hire? Perhaps. David Ballard told her that her brother George was one of the best businessmen he’d ever seen, and Josephine wouldn’t need to worry about leaving the business in her brother’s hands. But she has to do something and perhaps her destiny, like George’s, is with the company her father founded. All of this, however, lies in her future. Right now she’s a free woman and that’s enough.

  She’ll also need to come to a decision about her money. Does it rightfully belong to her, or should she share her wealth with Matthew and Zack, the two brothers from whom she stole so much? She’s still angry about their treatment of her, and though they’ve apologised (sincerely in Matthew’s case, and with surprising grace in Zack’s), she doubts that anything would change if the whole business started back from the beginning again. In her heart, she knows she’ll give them each back the million she stole, but she is genuinely unsure about giving them a share of their father’s wealth. For now, she accepts their apologies and keeps the money, except for a plump six-figure cheque which finds its way (very much to his surprise) to a little-known Hungarian chess player, now returned to the land of his birth. Meantime, George is keen to reinvest profits in the company, which, he says, has an amazing future ahead of it. So the money’s not going anywhere. Later on, if she chooses to share things out, the shares will be worth more than they’re worth today.

  Right now she has her own life to get started and her mother’s to watch over. She has bought her mother a cottage in the Cotswolds. The cottage has a rose-covered porch and a bungalow at the bottom of a big garden, where an old couple live. The woman looks after Helen and the man looks after the garden, which has some wonderful fruit trees and its own small stretch of stream. Matthew and Fiona, George and Val, and Josephine herself are frequent visitors. Even Zack comes up from time to time these days.

  Unbelievably, Helen Gradley is recovering a bit. Not all the way; probably she never will. But somehow, something inside her has sensed that the world has become a safer, kinder, more comfortable place, and the distress which has been with her so long has lifted. She’s re-entered physical therapy, and this time she attacks it with a will. Her speech is better, her coordination very much improved. She’ll remain disabled, of course, and she’ll always need help with the day-to-day business of life, but to see her walking in her garden, you wouldn’t dream of thinking her unhappy.

  What’s more, if you were to see her walking there, you would most likely see her in the company of a retired gentleman, a former major in the Royal Greenjackets. He’s not the best-looking gentleman in the world, not even for his age, and his brain is a little scrambled too (the result of honourable service, no doubt). But the two of them seem to like each other - at any rate, he makes a point of calling frequently and Helen always seems pleased to see him. And if, one day, he should lift his tattered Panama hat and propose - why, the chances are, she’d say yes.

  And that would be the happiest of endings.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Money Makers is the first of my novels: my entrance into the world of writing. Before then, I had been an investment banker. Trained on Wall Street, based in London and working on deals that spanned the globe, from Tokyo to New York, London to Rome, Warsaw to Madrid.

  It was a fun decade. I travelled a lot, made some good friends, and felt the rush of capitalism’s raw energy beneath my wings. I always, however, knew I would leave banking one day. Although I liked the business, I never loved it. I knew that one day I would quit to write a novel.

  That day came sooner than I expected. On holiday one year, my wife, Nuala, fell sick. It looked reasonably serious – serious enough that we packed up early and flew home – but we both expected the illness to pass, the way these things do.

  It didn’t pass. It got worse. Nuala had difficulty speaking, difficulty moving, difficulty coping with light or noise. For a while, we tried to behave as though things were vaguely normal. I would make sure that there were care assistants present through the day, but I went off to work as usual.

  The care assistants couldn’t have been nicer, but they weren’t me. My wife simply needed the kind of care that only I could provide. So I quit. I left the kind of job that Zack does in the Money Makers in order to spend time at home, look after Nuala – and write this book.

  They were strange times, those. Much of this book was written in semi-darkness, half in silence, half in muttered conversation with my afflicted wife. It was almost as though the more restricted our own lives became, the more essential it was to write about a world surging with energy, action and ambition.

  And I loved writing it. Loved it enough that I never wanted to go back to banking, not even when Nuala got better enough that she no longer needed round-the clock help. (She’s still not 100% now, by the way, but MILES better than she was. We have two kids, and a nice, active life. We’re happy!)

  And of course this book is full of my experiences and I tried hard to be as accurate as I could. The training programme that Matthew did in New York? I did one
like it. The vault underneath Madison, stuffed full of gold and Eurobonds? Yep, I’ve opened and closed a vault just like it. The slog of big, brutal deals? The bonus end-of-year bonus awards? The relentless work pressure? The whirlwind of international colleagues, clients and companies? Yes, I’ve been there, done that.

  Nor is it just the bigger elements of the narrative where I’ve stayed close to reality. Countless details in this book are precisely accurate to the world I’m writing about. That whistling you get round the vault doors when you open them in the morning? That’s real. The saw for cutting coupons off Eurobonds? That’s real. That moment when Matthew ‘stubbed his toe on a billion dollars’? That happened to me, except I think it was my knee.

  After writing this book, I went on to become a full time professional writer. I’ve written good books and some not-quite-so-good ones. I’ve written ones that have sold well and ones that dropped out of sight on release, never to be seen again. But of all of them, this very first one has a special place in my affections – because this is the book that turned me from one thing into another, from a banker to a writer.

  If you enjoyed this book and would like to know when I’m releasing another, then let me know. Simply sign up to my mailing list and I’ll drop you a line when I’ve got a book coming out. I won’t send you emails about anything else. I won’t hand your personal details over to anyone else for any reason ever. And if you ever get bored of getting my (very occasional) missives, it’ll be a single click to unsubscribe.

  I hope you loved reading this book – and I really hope to have your company again in the future. Thank you!

  Harry Bingham

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  THE FIONA GRIFFITHS CRIME SERIES

  Talking to the Dead (Fiona Griffiths 1)

  A police procedural – but a kind you’ve never encountered before. Introducing Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths. (“a stunner with precision plotting, an unusual setting, and a deeply complex protagonist… Breathtaking” — Seattle Times)

  Love Story, With Murders (Fiona Griffiths 2)

  Fiona Griffiths is asked to investigate some illegal rubbish, but what she finds is a human leg, a woman’s leg, complete with high-heeled shoe. The corpse proves to be five years dead, but then new body parts start appearing, and these are male, dark-skinned, and totally fresh. (“A dark delight” – Washington Post)

  The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (Fiona Griffiths 3)

  A boring case: payroll fraud in a discount furniture store. It’s a case Fiona doesn’t want to take, but then she finds her first corpse: an old woman, starved to death. As the evidence (and corpses) mount, her boss asks her to go undercover to penetrate the darkest, most ambitious, and most dangerous criminal organization in the country. It’s an assignment where failure means death. (“clever ... mesmerizing ... brilliant ... Hits spots that other crime fiction simply doesn’t.” – CrimeFictionLover.com)

  THE BORING STUFF (MADE A BIT MORE TRUTHFUL)

  The original HarperCollins edition of this book had a blurb which read, “This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.” Which can’t be true, can it? I mean, London features in the novel and that’s not a fictional city, is it? But if you want to sue me over something, then that bit is completely made up and wasn’t about you anyway. OK?

  The original edition also had a blurb that said, “No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.” And that’s rubbish too, isn’t it? I mean, what if you happen to read a paragraph or two out to your nearest and dearest? That’s ‘transmitting’ a part of this novel ‘in any form or by any means’, isn’t it? But I’m not going to sue you and I doubt anyone else is either.

  Copyright © Harry Bingham 2000

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated to my beloved wife, N.

  ‘Who think the same thoughts without need of speech

  And babble the same speech without need of meaning’