Due Diligence

by Grant Sutherland

  Nearing the stables now, I see Charles in the yard talking with someone. It looks like the groom, but then the groom appears from the stalls.

  My father notices me squinting. ‘Gifford,’ he says. Eric Gifford, President and leading light of American Pacific. ‘I asked him down.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was in town. Charles thought it might be a civil gesture.’

  My shoulders tighten. Twelve months ago I would cheerfully have strangled the urbane Eric Gifford. Twelve months ago he was accumulating a stake in Carlton Brothers, and we were wondering if we would be forced to mount a formal defence. At my insistence, Charles was sent across to New York and a truce was organized: Gifford stopped buying at five per cent. But Sir Charles was so impressed with what he saw of their operation, and by Gifford himself, that he suggested we turn the unasked-for connection to advantage. Our joint venture in Funds Management is the first fruit of this uneasy transatlantic alliance.

  ‘Apart from that?’ I ask.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Apart from the civil gesture. What’s he doing here?’

  ‘It can’t do any harm. Raef.’

  I put a hand on his elbow and we stop in the open field. I ask him why he hasn’t told me about this.

  ‘It’s nothing formal,’ he says. ‘With Lyle making trouble, we thought it might be an idea.’

  ‘Meaning what? You think we need a white knight?’

  ‘Raef. Please.’

  ‘I've got a right to know.’

  He seems to draw into himself. He doesn‘t like open confrontations, especially with me. ‘A precaution,’ he say. ‘That’s all.’

  A precaution: in his own mind he really believes that. But his thoughts are turning in a direction that I don’t like one bit. He thinks that if Lyle makes a move on Carltons, it might be useful to have a cash- rich ally close by; a possible white knight who could save us from the clutches of Sandersons. But being saved like this would mean disappearing into American Pacific’s great maw. My father, though he would never admit to it, is preparing to lose.

  ‘Edward!’ Charles calls, and we turn to see him and Gifford both mounted, and looking our way. In silence now, we go down to join them.

  2

  * * *

  Later, back up at the house, I’m putting on my dark jacket when Margie passes the bedroom door.

  ‘Raef? Theresa and Annie just come.’

  A jolt of confused impulses rushes through me: happiness and recrimination; behind these a good deal of pain.

  ‘I’ll be right down.’ I continue to check myself in the mirror, and a minute later I feel ready to face my wife.

  Theresa is in the dining room, she comes across and peeks my cheek. Sir John and his wife stand near by. I draw away gently. ‘Where’s Annie?’

  Theresa gives me a piercing look. ‘Out in the garden,’ she says.

  ‘How’s everything down in Hampshire?’

  She tells me her parents send their love. We exchange a few more banalities - isn’t the house looking good, aren't the willows growing well — all as if nothing has happened. Not a word of regret for Daniel. At last Sir John and his wife come over to join us and I excuse myself and step through the high french windows. The tension in my shoulders eases. I fill my lungs with air.

  My wife is a beautiful woman. That isn’t just my opinion, I couldn’t count the times I’ve been congratulated on my undeserved good fortune. Even my mother, a hard judge of the feminine, conceded that Theresa was something more than just pretty. And my father adores her. She has an elegant grace, a natural ease, that no amount of effort could counterfeit. But I married her for another reason. I married Theresa, if it doesn’t sound too ridiculously old-fashioned, because I loved her, and because I believed that she loved me.

  What changed? For the first few years it was fine, we were happy. Very happy. But then she started talking about children, and I wasn’t ready, there was still too much to do at the bank. We discussed it, mature adults being reasonable, and she agreed to wait. Reasonable. What chance does reason stand against nature? In the last few years before Annie was born I would sometimes wake in the middle of the night to find Theresa crying quietly beside me. And I knew why. Yes, I knew. But I was sure that once I had the bank sorted out we could put things right again. Would that have happened? I don’t know. Maybe. Annie is on the lawn in front of me, stamping patterns into the melting frost with her tiny galoshes. She drags her heels, joining patterns, then she takes a long stride and looks back. A moment’s uncertainty, then she laughs.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A house,’ she says.

  ‘A doll’s house?’

  She shakes her head sternly, and I bend down and rub my cheek against hers. She laughs again and pushes me away. My hand slides over her back, an instinctive movement, nothing remains now but the one small scar. Beyond the walled garden the churchbells begin to toll. ‘What’s that?’ she says.

  But before I can answer, Theresa calls from the doorway. ‘Annie. Come and put your shoes on.’ Annie stomps, making patterns again, and I scoop her into my arms and she wriggles and shrieks with laughter as I carry her inside. It feels wrong.

  Theresa and I enter the church together, Annie clinging shyly to Theresa’s left hand. Scores of people have come, friends of my mother’s I haven’t seen for years, every pew in the small church is taken. There’s a low murmur of conversation, and the heads turn our way when we pass. As we slide into the family pew near the pulpit I wonder what these others see when they look at the three of us. A family? Only my father, who enters behind us, knows something is wrong. He knows Theresa has spent many weeks down in Hampshire lately, and he knows that I don’t bring Annie, as I always used to, when I visit him in St James’s. My excuse, Annie’s cancer, has become rather worn. But even he doesn’t know that for the past three months Theresa and I have barely spoken, nor that we no longer share the same bed.

  The churchbells ring out, and through the stained- glass cross of St George the refracted light shines down on the altar. Theresa hands me a prayer book and the Order of Service without looking up. Amidst the many troubles of our lives, we must try now to remember the dead.

  3

  * * *

  ‘So that’s it, they agreed to raise the bid to 180.’ Vance has been pacing his office, a bundle of nervous energy, and filling me in on his meeting with the Meyers. Now he pauses. ‘I did call you. No answer the first time.’ He flicks through another file then puts it aside. I’ve never seen him this worked-up before.

  ‘Stephen, if you’ve got any worries about this, I’d like to hear them now.’

  ‘Worries? Raef, we’re almost there.’

  It was three o’clock before he got through to me at Boddington; lunch over, my father had just suggested a walk with Theresa and Gifford. Vance’s call was timely, I got in the car and came straight here.

  Now he opens his hands. ‘What can we lose?’

  ‘If we get it wrong? How about our reputation?’

  He shrugs off this feeble platitude. Our reputation, as we both know, will be shattered anyway if our Corporate Finance people decamp en masse. Scrambled, cobbled together, hurried, whatever way we can manage it now, we have to win this bid. I lean across his desk and punch up last week’s closings on the Reuters. He starts in about David Meyer, but I interrupt him, tapping the screen. ‘You saw this?’

  On Thursday the Parnells’ price took an unusual jump, not dramatic, but quite noticeable against the background of a sliding market.

  ‘More buyers than sellers,’ he says. ‘So what?’

  I point to the Thursday closing on the Footsie, the Stock Exchange’s primary index: thirty points down.

  ‘Parnells weren’t the only ones up,’ Vance protests.

  ‘Some up, some down, it’s a market.’

  ‘Who’s worked on the new offer documents?’

  ‘Haywood and Cawley.’ Two hotshot MBAs.

  ‘You warned them?’

/>   ‘They both know the rules.’

  The rules are that insider knowledge is untradeable; but there are degrees of knowledge, and wide grey areas where fortunes are made each year. Parnells is in our Red Book right now, the in-house list of companies no Carltons employee can dabble in. Definitely off-limits.

  I look out through the window, into the evening. Only a few lights burn in the buildings on the far side of the river. It is Sunday: all the sensible men are at home with their families. And here am I with Stephen Vance, talking business.

  ‘How are the boys?’

  He glances up from his reading. ‘Fine. Jennifer’s bringing them up next weekend.’ Jenniifer his ex-wife, they’ve been divorced several years now. ‘What about Annie?’

  ‘Better. She seems okay.’

  Vance’s grey eyes are sympathetic. He isn’t one to bare his soul or to pry into another man's personal affairs. Now he looks at me and waits.

  'They think she’s over the worst. We get some more results back in the next few days.’

  ‘How’s Theresa holding up?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Honestly?’

  He nods.

  ‘I feel,’ I say, ‘like the mine caved in, and I’m the only survivor.’

  He drops his head to one side. ‘You shouldn’t be here. Annie’s still getting over those tests. Now Daniel . . . Maybe you should have a break for a week. Take Theresa and Annie away somewhere.’

  If only, I think. If only my life were that simple again.

  ‘They’re down in Hampshire already. Seeing Theresa’s parents.’

  ‘Well, go and join them.’

  ‘Did I ever introduce you to my mother-in-law?’ At this, Vance smiles. ‘I’d just be on the phone to you here all day,’ I tell him. ‘I’d rather stay.’

  He offers to have Jennifer call Theresa, but I politely decline. He looks pensive.

  'Do you see her much?’ I ask. ‘Jennifer?’

  ‘Not much.’

  He rocks in his chair and stares out across the river. We seem to have drifted near to a subject I’ve never broached with him before, his divorce. And I feel that I could ask him now, that he’s even expecting it: What went wrong? How did the boys take it? Did he gain a new freedom, or only loneliness? Was it, in the end, a huge mistake? But I hesitate, and the moment passes. He turns back to his desk.

  ‘Daniel’s death wasn’t your fault, Raef.’

  I draw back. ‘My fault?’

  ‘Sir John thinks you’re blaming yourself. I’m not sure that I don’t agree.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘For organizing the Treasury party. Choosing the boat.’ He raises his eyes. ‘It just happened, Raef. You’re not to blame.’

  Me. I am not to blame. Face burning, I reach across his desk for the printout from Parnells’ registrar: the latest list of shareholders.

  ‘You’re not going to take a break, are you.’

  ‘No.’ I scan the list: the usual pension funds and investment houses, and below these a cluster of nominee accounts. ‘But you can tell Sir John you tried.’

  Vance laughs. I hand him the printout. ‘Can’t see any of these causing trouble, can you?’

  Back to business. Now Vance gives me more details of this morning’s meeting. Diplomatic and businesslike, this is more likeg the Vance I know. After quoting some remark of David Meyer’s, he says, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the was the brains.’

  ‘I thought that was Reuben.’

  ‘So does everyone.’

  ‘Don’t get psychological on me Stephen, let’s keep them both happy.’ I turn his glass paperweight over in my hands. ‘You’re confident we're going to win this?’

  ‘Now they’ve raised the bid. Sure.’

  ‘No cock-ups?’

  ‘Raef,’ he says firmly. ‘There won’t be a problem.’

  A phone rings somewhere down the corridor. Vance points to his console. ‘Your line.’

  I pick up the receiver. Roger Penfield. He has something to discuss with me, he says, but not on the phone. He would like to see me now, in his office. ‘Twenty minutes?’ He says that he will be waiting.

  When I hang up, Vance looks at me askance. ‘Roger Penfield?’

  Pulling a face, I pick up my coat as I head for the door.

  ‘I’ll save you a seat for breakfast,’ Vance calls.

  Standing at the lifts, I hear a quick tapping at the keyboard start up behind me. The life of a man parted from his family. Sunday evening, and Stephen Vance, the corporate banker’s banker, is settling down to work.

  4

  * * *

  Nationalised in 1946, the Bank of England has been a pillar of the City for centuries. Apart from its responsibility for the currency, it has a duty to maintain stability in the banking system, an obligation overseen by Roger Penfield. A security guard accompanies me up to the office. The vast spaces of the building are meant to impress, and fifty years ago they probably did; but nowadays the marbled caverns seem an empty extravagance. The functionality of the Bundesbank offices, their German counterpart, could belong to another world: the real world, Daniel always said.

  Penfield comes round his desk to greet me, and notices me glancing about. ‘Redecoration,’ he says. ‘Three months’ worth of meetings. Drop your coat over there Raef.’

  I would ask why I’m here, but that’s not how things are done in this place. Instead I take a seat. Like me, Penfield is dressed casually. Without his suit and tie he seems strangely diminished, incongruous even, as he leans against his desk. The bright yellow Ralph Lauren jersey, I suspect, was chosen by his wife.

  ‘Ski tan?’ I venture.

  He tells me about his winter break in Canada; heli-skiing apparently, his latest big thing. Behind his smugness there is a boyish enthusiasm that redeems him. He’s reputed to have a fierce temper, but I've never seen it myself. We move on to City gossip: the Fed rate rise last week, who’s doing what to whom. And just when I’m wondering if the direct approach might have been better after all, he mentions that he’s spoken with Inspector Ryan.

  ‘Hasn’t made much headway, I understand.’

  I remark that the Inspector seems a capable man.

  Penfield never really knew Daniel, but he knows that Daniel and I were friends. He gives me a sympathetic look, but to his credit he spares me any hollow condolences. Instead he hands me a sheet of paper. ‘What do you make of this?’

  The sheet bears the Carlton Brothers letterhead; the family crest, a stag rampant on an azure shield, and the family motto, Loyal in Adversity. Beneath these, there’s a short note.

  Dear Sir,

  A fraudulent trading ring has been operating at Carlton Brothers plc over the past twelve months. Details of several transactions are enclosed for your perusal.

  No signature. I turn the page over, but the other side is blank. ‘Where’s the rest of it?’

  'That’s it. No enclosure.’

  I read the note again. ‘You’re not taking it seriously?’

  'Wouldn’t normally. These things come in from time to time. Cranks. Someone with a grudge.’ He goes to a cabinet in the corner. ‘Drink, Raef?’

  I turn my head. I ask what makes this note different.

  'Timing. We received it Friday.’ He leaves the obvious unspoken. Daniel died Thursday night.

  ‘Ryan never mentioned it,’ I say as Penfield returns from the cabinet with a glass of port.

  ‘Rather our fault, I’m afraid. The letter wasn’t opened till late Friday. It went to the Investigation Unit.’ The Bank department charged with investigating questionable activity at City-based banks. ‘The head of the Unit takes his work home. He found it this afternoon. Rang me straight away.’

  So now I fill in the blanks. Penfield asked to see the note himself, and after meeting with the Head of the Investigation Unit, and still not satisfied, he called me. Probably at home, before trying the office. And somewhere along the way he’s spoken to Ryan.

/>   I hand back the note. ‘You think this is tied up with Daniel?’

  ‘Odd coincidence, wouldn’t you agree? This isn’t Moscow, Raef. It’s not every day a senior banker's shot dead in the street.’

  ‘So do you want me to look into it?’

  ‘We were thinking in terms of our people.’

  ‘The Investigation Unit?’

  ‘We thought perhaps early this week.’

  ‘Roger.’ I look at him in disbelief. ‘It’s an unsigned note.’

  He tells me there are certain pressures. ‘I haven’t much choice, you understand.’

  But I'm too alarmed to understand anything just yet. Pressure? From Ryan?

  ‘Our Treasurer murdered one week, and the next week the Investigation Unit’s crawling all over us? Roger, you'll know all about pressure if the rumours start. Christ. How do you think this’ll look?’

  He studies the space above my shoulder. He knows exactly how it will look. It will look as if Daniel, Carltons’ Treasurer, was involved in a fraud. Overnight, Carltons could become a leper in the City.

  ‘You can’t want that.’

  ‘Of course we don’t want it.’

  ‘Then stop it,’ I say.

  There it is, what he must have been expecting to hear. Stop it. Don’t investigate. Help me defend my bank. In my grandfather's day this conversation would have gone no further; a handshake, my grandfather’s assurance, and there it would have ended. But my grandfather’s day is gone.

  Penfield rises, the worry-lines ploughed deep. ‘Not that easy, I’m afraid. You saw that bloody Commons Committee the other day. Half a dozen of the elect, and not a brain cell to share between them. There are noses being poked in here I didn’t even know existed.’