In the watching car they saw the taxi arrive and the girls go in.
“If Loosemore recognises Miranda this is where it ends,” Niall said.
“Shouldn’t think she’ll even look at her,” Matt said. “And I don’t think many people would recognise her with her new spiky blond hair. It’s amazing. And it suits her.”
Niall grunted.
The house was dark and quiet.
Inside, Miranda took a card from the infamous box and became Elaine. It was a name she had never seen and she tried to flash it discreetly to Rebecca, but Vivien Loosemore herself said, “Elaine. Welcome. Go upstairs with the others.” She looked Miranda full in the face but showed no sign of recognition, (“Well, she does hardly know me,” Miranda reminded herself, as she had reminded Niall several times already), and the four girls made their way upstairs.
“It’s just so creepy,” Miranda said when they were safely behind a closed door.
“Tell me about it,” Rebecca agreed.
“Will someone tell ME what is going on?” Beth asked bluntly, stopping in the act of stepping out of her jeans.
Penny ended the silence that followed.
“My friends here have a slightly different agenda for tonight,” she said.
“Meaning what exactly?”
“Meaning things may not all go according to the usual script.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Beth asked angrily. “Don’t I matter? What is going to happen?”
“It’s my fault,” Miranda put in. “Some of these men did something pretty vile and I persuaded Penny to help me get them back.”
“You weren’t even supposed to be here, Beth,” Penny said. “It was only because they needed four of us – ”
“So now I’m bottom of the ladder?” Beth said bitterly.
“No – ”
“And if I hadn’t just forced the issue now,” she went on, “would you have said anything to me? Or would you just have carried on and let me play catch up?”
“You were safer not knowing,” Rebecca said.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Beth said savagely. “After last time.”
“I’ve got a reason,” Rebecca replied.
“We should be talking about what we’re going to do,” Miranda said.
“Oh fine, yeah, I don’t matter,” Beth said. “Just leave me in the dark. What if I went downstairs and warned Mary that something was brewing and she should call the whole thing off? At least she might give me my money, which it doesn’t sound like I’m going to get otherwise.”
“Beth if you knew what this was about you’d agree with us,” Penny said.
“So tell me. Show me that much respect.”
“I was blind,” Miranda said. “I had an eye transplant and now I can see.”
“She’s got my brother’s eyes,” Rebecca said. “He died in a car accident.”
“These men were all involved in it and they tried to fix it so it didn’t work,” Miranda continued. They wanted me to stay blind and the gift of Rebecca’s brother’s eyes to be wasted. It was all about money to them. We want to expose them to the world for what they are.”
Daniel Sullivan chose an Armani suit. He didn’t usually push the boat out that far on a Number 17 night, but he felt sure that Duncan Clark would dress to impress and he was determined not to be outdone. The shirt and tie had required long deliberation; so long that the fourth Mrs. Sullivan had come upstairs to see if anything was amiss. With his extravagant eating and drinking and his delight in taking no exercise at all if he could help it, she lived in constant fear of his suffering a massive heart attack.
“I’m absolutely fine,” Daniel had hissed at her, and she had retreated.
Finally dressed to his satisfaction, Daniel left the house and got into his car. He had missed nights like this, and tonight was going to be a particularly pleasing one. John’s scepticism and groundless fear would be exposed for exactly what it was. He – Daniel – should have backed his own judgment and taken this step a long time ago. Though he said it himself, the future was looking particularly rosy.
Roderick Leman saw Daniel Sullivan get into his car, and the grey Mercedes pull away from the kerb. He started his own engine and followed. He wished it were a little darker, but the nights were light now and it wasn’t even dusk.
“Now then,” he said to his passenger. “Tell me again what all this is about.”
“It’s about that odious man in the car in front,” Theresa Clarke said.
Roderick made no response, concentrated on the Mercedes.
“He made a public statement about my husband that was a total lie,” Theresa went on. “You knew Damian. You saw how he was with your daughter. He would’ve done anything to help her. He was a good man.”
“Yes I met him,” Roderick said. “Yes he seemed all those things. But we can’t get away from the fact that before he died Miranda’s eyesight failed twice. Since he died, she’s had no more trouble. I’m only stating the facts,” he added quickly as he heard Theresa’s sharply indrawn breath ready for an angry riposte.
Instead she said nothing.
“This is what I know,” she said at last. “These are my facts. Damian was incredibly excited when he knew he was going to be involved with the aftercare of your daughter’s operation. He was like a small boy on Christmas morning. He hero-worshipped Jamal Daghash and he used to say “Nobody believes him but he’s a genius. It really could work. It will work.” Why would he have said that if he was secretly – on his own, which was what they claimed at the press conference – planning to derail the whole thing?”
“Misdirection,” Roderick Leman hazarded.
Ignoring him, Theresa Clarke went on.
“What I do know is that he changed in the last six months of his life. It was as if someone had sucked all the joy out of him. I mean he tried to hide it, but we noticed at home. The children noticed. They asked me if something was the matter with him. I couldn’t believe it was his work, so I thought it must’ve been me.” Tears started to strangle her voice. “I thought he’d met somebody else but I couldn’t bear to ask. I wish I had.”
“And so you think,” Roderick said, filling the space because he knew Theresa couldn’t speak for crying, “that Daniel Sullivan and Duncan Clark had some hold over him and made him do it. That’s what you said in my office this afternoon. But I still don’t understand why or what.”
Theresa made a supreme effort to compose herself.
“Duncan Clark went on record with his opposition to the operation,” she said. “He said it was impossible and that it was a huge waste of money. His credibility would have been destroyed if it had worked.”
“When Miranda’s sight failed on This Is Now it was Duncan Clark who restored it,” Roderick countered.
“Very clever,” Theresa said; “turn himself into the hero of the hour safe in the knowledge that Damian would ensure that it continued to fail.”
“But why Daniel Sullivan?” Leman asked. “It was BAB who put up most of the money in the first place.”
“I wish I knew,” Theresa said. “But as soon as he said that about Damian having some religious conviction I knew he was in it up to his neck. It was an incredibly convenient lie, impossible to disprove because he was dead, but anyone who really knew Damian would have known. He was an atheist. His whole life. My family are churchgoers and when we first started going out we had some quite heated discussions about it. Well, I got heated. He never did. He used very calmly and rationally to lay out all the ‘evidence’ as he described it and then say, “So you see, my darling, I would love to be able to give in to you, and the idea of God is a lovely one, but it just can’t be true.” I stopped going to church. For him really. But I’ve never stopped praying. And I pray every day for justice to catch up with that evil man.”
“OK,” Roderick said. He had heard most of this story when she had surprised him at his office when he got back from lunch. “And this evening?” he asked. “What
are we doing this evening?”
“I knew very little about Damian’s dealings with Daniel Sullivan,” Theresa Clarke said. “But there was an occasion when he was invited to some kind of do. It was called – pathetically, in my opinion – a “Number 17 Night”. When he told me I laughed. It sounded like something a group of adolescent boys might have come up with. He told me absolutely nothing about it beforehand other than that it was an honour to have been invited, and even less about it afterwards. I thought it might have been the freemasons or something. But I do know from the way he behaved when he came home and afterwards that he really didn’t enjoy it. Then I was speaking to Jamal Daghash yesterday and he let slip that Duncan Clark was going to a Number 17 Night tonight. Which means they’re both going to be there, and I’m going to walk in and confront them.”
“And you want me there.”
“Because they were stringing you along too,” Theresa said. “And I know they’re not going to take notice of threats from a woman like me, but they will from you. And the police will listen to you.”
“OK,” Roderick Leman said. Yes, he had at first been irritated and surprised by Theresa’s arrival at his office But when he had heard her out he found himself acknowledging that she was not just a crazy widow, but a woman presenting reasoned cogent arguments. He was moved by her understanding of her husband and persuaded by the total disconnect between her knowledge of him and the story postulated by Sullivan and Clark. Thinking on, he had then become angry. And angry most of all with John Holthouse. On Holthouse’s recommendation, he had handed over a large sum of money to ensure that his daughter got the operation. Some of that money, he was sure, had ended up in Daniel Sullivan’s pocket. And all the time one if not both of them had known that the whole thing was a scam. That his daughter would never get her sight. Presumably when Miranda’s operation was deemed a total failure, some other unsuspecting parent with the means to pay would be targeted. And then another. It was in the throes of that rage that he had agreed to join forces with Theresa and called home to say he would be out late. The rage had now subsided, but a controlled anger at having been played for a fool simmered under the surface. He was looking forward to confronting the perpetrators. To letting them know that he was on to them, that he would do everything he could to ensure there was never another sucker to follow in his footsteps.
Beth was causing problems.
“I don’t want any part of this, Pen. I wish you’d left me out of it,” she said. “I need this money and I’m not part of your crusade.”
“What do you mean, you need this money?” Penny snapped. “This is the first of these nights we’ve had in months. They used to be quite regular but they’ve gone down to nothing.”
“And they might have got back to being regular but they won’t after this,” Beth retorted.
“Just be glad it happened at all,” Penny said.
“I should be glad, should I? Grateful to Auntie Penny for giving me this great opportunity?”
“Beth. We’re a couple of part-time prostitutes. Face it. It’s nothing to be proud of. We’ve made a bit of money and sometimes we’ve had a laugh. But there are actually things that matter more than us, and rich bastards playing god with people’s lives is one of those things. We’ve both had clients that needed a bit of caring for, but these twats aren’t them.”
“Suddenly Penny is a champion of social morality.”
“Oh Beth. Do you enjoy what we do? Because I don’t. And if there are any who do I take my hat off to them.”
Beth said nothing. Rebecca looked at Miranda. Miranda looked back. She kept hearing Niall saying the plan for the evening was a mess. He was right, and here they all were sitting in the middle of it.
Here’s what you can do,” Penny said. “You can go downstairs and tell Mary you’re ill and you can’t stay. Then when all this is over and Daniel gets desperate for extra-marital sex I’ll give him your number.”
Beth continued to sit in silence, her right leg twitching ceaselessly up and down.
“I’m not going to walk out now,” she said at last.
“Thank you,” Rebecca said. “I’m really sorry.”
“I should’ve known as soon as I saw you in the cab,” Beth said.
“Yeah,” Rebecca admitted. “I’m generally bad news.”
“So now,” Beth went on, “tell me quickly how and when exactly this is going to break.”
“Penny thinks we should wait until after the meal,” Miranda said, “but Rebecca and I want to get straight on with it. Daniel Sullivan will probably recognise me.”
“He’ll only have eyes for Penny,” Beth said. “Wait till you see the way he looks at her. And she’s right. The moment they think they’re about to get their pricks into us they’ll be at their most vulnerable. When Gordon says it’s time for dessert we say “No sex until you tell” or words to that effect.”
“I don’t know if I can carry it off for that long,” Miranda said.
“You will,” Beth replied. “They hardly notice us while we feed them. Just the odd wandering hand.”
Miranda shivered.
“I think we have to play it by ear,” Rebecca said. “We just don’t know how things are going to go.”
“Obviously,” Penny said.
They heard the doorbell down below.
“It begins.” There was a hint of excitement in Penny’s voice.
“Good evening, Mary,” Daniel said to Vivien Loosemore. “Any of our guests arrived yet?”
“No,” she responded.
“Not even Adrian? He’s usually keen.”
“No, not even Adrian.”
“The girls are here, I trust?”
“Yes.”
“How did they look?”
“I can honestly say I didn’t notice.”
Daniel walked through Vivien’s house as if it were his own. He reached the lounge where a sideboard was set with a range of drinks and mixers and made himself a gin and tonic.
“Cheers,” he said, and drank a large mouthful. “Are you going to look like a cross between death and a terrified rabbit all night?” he asked.
“I don’t like these evenings,” Vivien said. “I’ve never made any secret of that.”
“What’s not to like?” Daniel said, sitting. “All you have to do is get the food in. You don’t even cook it.”
“I don’t like anything about them. You exploit the girls upstairs. You exploit me. Right-thinking people would find the whole idea disgusting.”
“The girls enjoy it. Ask them. The calibre of men they get to be pleasured by here is far above anything they’re going to meet in their daily lives – ”
“You know absolutely nothing about their daily lives.”
“And I’m sure they enjoy spending the money.”
Vivien Loosemore wanted to tell him that this was the last time, but the words wouldn’t let themselves be said. She retreated to the kitchen. Daniel took out his phone and checked his emails and messages. He saw there were two from Theresa Clarke and deleted them unread. He had an email – presumably spam – from an address describing itself as [email protected]. His finger hovered over the delete icon but then curiosity got the better of him. The message had come to his BAB email, so whoever it was hadn’t got to his private account. He opened it.
The message was three words long:
“Tonight’s the night.”
He stared at it. In many ways tonight was the night, but Nemesis? There were two things about Nemesis. One was that she was the classical goddess of comeuppance. The other was that whoever had created the email account knew that. They also knew something about tonight. He doubted that Penny’s education stretched to the more obscure classical deities, and she was the only one in her party who could have found his BAB email – the others didn’t know his name or his place of work. Penny might not be the sharpest tool in the box, but she was unquestionably discreet. That left the guests and Vivien, and anyone that they might accidentally o
r deliberately have told. John had gone flaky recently, jumping at shadows. Could this be him, anonymously making some tongue-in-cheek prediction? Lining himself up to say “I told you so.” No, not the John he knew. And Vivien would never have scraped up enough gumption, but of course she could have leaked the information to someone else, although he had always felt that her distaste for the whole thing and her own involvement in it acted very efficiently as a muzzle. Which brought it down to Duncan Clark and the director general. The eye consultant – he went back over their lunch together and their conversations before and after the press conference. No. Although Duncan Clark would certainly know who Nemesis was, an anonymous email wasn’t his style, and it made no sense.
What did he know about Tony Strong? Tony Strong OBE, curse him. Soon, no doubt, to be Sir Tony for services to the visually impaired. For somebody in such a high profile role, Tony was a shadowy figure. He was always busy doing something else when you needed him, but somehow, without ever making his presence felt, he seemed to know everything that was going on, and he had a reputation for ruthlessness from his previous incarnation as a CEO in the business world. He had panicked John by spotting his financial wizardry very early on, but then seemed to share John’s view that it equated to the bonuses a big company might pay, and that they were well-deserved. They continued, so long as he got his share and he had a say in what happened. He said, “I didn’t get where I am today by being a saint. But the golden rule is, the business always comes first. If you’re thinking of the business as your cash cow, you’re going to work a damn sight harder for the business.”
What annoyed Daniel about Tony Strong was that his admiration was all for John. He tolerated Daniel because John thought highly of him and he had been at BAB for twenty years, but he didn’t value what he had to offer. It was time for that to change. Daniel had started to feel that Tony was calling more of the shots than he and John were. He was acting like someone who had joined the board and was suddenly trying to buy a majority shareholding and get control. Inviting him tonight was about wresting back some of that control. He had put it off for years, for a number of reasons, but in the aftermath of the eye transplant business it had seemed like the right move, and Tony had been very excited to be invited. Or had that excitement been at an opportunity to hang Daniel out to dry?
Eyes of the Blind Page 33
