The Account

by Roderick Mann

  He stood by the door waiting for Julia to leave. Defeated, she went out into the lobby and down the steps to the street. It was raining hard and there were no taxis in sight. By the time she reached the corner where the rue de Hesse turns into the busy Boulevard Georges Favon she was soaked. There was a café on the corner. She went in and had a coffee, waiting to see if the rain would ease up. When it did not she stood patiently outside until a taxi came by. Back at the hotel, wet through, she took a hot bath and changed into dry clothes. Then she called the woman Al Sherrill had recommended that she contact – Berthe Heydecker of the Journal de Genève.

  ‘I was wondering if you had time for a drink while I am here?’ she asked, after introducing herself. ‘I am in Geneva for one night only and need some advice.’

  ‘I see.’ There was a short pause. ‘Do you know the Bar Anglais at the Bristol Hotel? In the rue de Mont-Blanc?’

  ‘I can find it.’

  ‘Why don’t we meet there? Say about six. Ask the barman to point me out.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Julia said.

  There were only half a dozen people in the bar; a group of five solid-looking businessmen in one corner and a woman in her late fifties, hair cut in an old-fashioned pageboy style, wearing heavy rimmed spectacles, sitting alone at a table. She looked up as Julia walked in.

  ‘Miss Lang? I’m Berthe Heydecker.’ She raised a hand to summon the waiter. ‘I’ve ordered a glass of white wine,’ she said. ‘What will you have?’

  ‘A Perrier, please.’

  ‘You’re sure? This wine is really good.’

  ‘I don’t drink much.’

  The drinks arrived with a dish of peanuts. Heydecker scooped up a handful and washed them down with wine.

  ‘So. Al Sherrill is thriving?’

  ‘Very much so,’ Julia said, hoping she would not have to go into details about the health of the mysterious Mr Sherrill whom she had never met.

  ‘I do some work for him occasionally,’ Heydecker said. ‘Research. Mostly he looks for bank scandals.’ She smiled thinly.

  Julia put down her glass. ‘Miss Heydecker, I’m hoping you can tell me something about a banker here named Eberhardt?’

  ‘Paul Eberhardt?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Well …’ Julia hesitated, unsure how to continue. ‘I am having some problems with his bank. An account was set up for me there by a friend. The bank denies all knowledge of it.’

  ‘And you have been to the bank?’

  ‘This afternoon. They said they have no record of an account. They won’t even admit that the man who arranged it is a customer.’

  Heydecker made a dismissive gesture with her hand. ‘Swiss banks never divulge the names of their customers.’

  ‘Is this man Eberhardt totally honest?’

  Heydecker smiled showing uneven teeth. ‘Miss Lang, Paul Eberhardt is one of the most distinguished bankers in Europe. I think you could say he is honest.’

  ‘When I went to the bank I was told that he was out of town,’ Julia said, her hopes of getting any information from Berthe Heydecker beginning to wane.

  ‘Perhaps he is. Whom did you see?’

  ‘A man called Charrier.’

  ‘Alain? I know him well.’

  ‘He wasn’t very helpful.’

  ‘They’re very discreet, Swiss banks.’

  ‘The thing is, can you advise me what to do? How can I find out if an account was set up?’

  ‘Miss Lang, the Banque Eberhardt is the third largest private bank in Switzerland. If they have no record of an account in your name then, believe me, there is no such account.’

  ‘I believe that there is.’

  Heydecker shrugged. ‘Perhaps you should contact the person who set it up and have them call the bank.’

  ‘That person is dead.’

  ‘Ah. That does make it difficult.’

  ‘Do you know Monsieur Eberhardt?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘I was wondering … could you possibly call and talk to him? Perhaps set up a meeting for me?’

  Heydecker stared at her. ‘That would be most improper, Miss Lang. This is not my affair. I cannot possibly intrude. In any event he would most certainly refuse.’ She glanced at her watch and put some money down on the table. ‘I’m afraid I must go. I’m sorry I cannot help you.’ She got to her feet, smoothing down her rumpled skirt. ‘Do give my best to Al when you see him.’

  She shook Julia’s hand, waved to the barman and clumped out. Julia remained seated for a moment, her depression mounting. She should never have come. The trip had been a complete waste of time. The nausea she had felt earlier that day was resurfacing. She picked up her coat and walked gloomily back to her hotel.

  ‘You know what I think?’ Lisa said. ‘You should go back to Geneva and demand to see this man Eberhardt. Don’t give up. Dammit, it’s a fortune.’

  ‘I know that,’ Julia said. ‘But I’m not putting myself through that humiliation again.’

  Lisa looked exasperated. ‘So you’re going to throw up your hands?’

  ‘Look,’ Julia said, ‘I have no proof of any of this. Robert said he’d opened an account for me. They say he didn’t. Maybe there was some mix-up. Who knows? It’s an important bank. Why would they lie to me?’

  ‘That’s a very good question,’ Lisa said quietly. ‘Try to figure out the answer.’

  Two days later, as Albert-Jean Cristiani arrived home after a particularly depressing afternoon, the phone was ringing.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ Berthe Heydecker said. ‘I met a woman called Julia Lang the other afternoon. She’s English. She had come here to see the people at the Banque Eberhardt because she says someone arranged an account there for her. But when she made enquiries they denied it. I thought you might be interested.’

  ‘I’m more than interested,’ Cristiani said. ‘Who did she see there?’

  ‘Alain Charrier.’

  ‘Not Eberhardt?’

  ‘They told her he was out of town. It’s true. He was in Zurich. I checked.’

  ‘What sort of woman is she?’

  ‘Attractive. Well dressed. I formed the opinion she might take matters further.’

  ‘Why did she call you?’

  ‘We have a mutual friend, Al Sherrill. Used to be here with the Herald Tribune. That’s why I agreed to see her.’

  Cristiani found himself smiling. Things were looking up. There was something going on at the Banque Eberhardt.

  ‘Thanks, Berthe,’ he said.

  ‘Any time. Oh, I looked through our old files as you asked. There’s nothing there. Just a couple of interviews with Eberhardt in which he talks about opening the bank in the thirties. Nothing helpful.’

  ‘Thanks anyway. We’ll dine again soon.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  But don’t hold your breath, Cristiani thought as he hung up. My days of expense account dinners are coming to an end. Only a few more weeks and he would be on his own, without the backing of the Federal Banking Commission.

  Chapter 28

  The following Wednesday Paul Eberhardt confided his concern about Julia Lang to Maȋtre Claude Bertrand.

  The lawyer smiled sympathetically. ‘You are having a difficult time, my friend. Phone taps, a car following you, now this.’

  ‘I’m concerned about this Englishwoman,’ Eberhardt said. ‘Who knows what trouble she may cause?’

  ‘She was Brand’s mistress, you say?’

  ‘According to his widow.’

  ‘Tell me again when you received Brand’s instructions about the account.’

  ‘He phoned me the day before he died. His written note arrived a day later. I had already set up the account on his instructions. It was in the computer. When I telephoned his widow to convey my sympathies I had to mention it. She was most abusive. She ordered me to cancel the account.’

  ‘A difficult lady, you told me.�
�

  ‘Impossible. I believe her to be mentally unstable.’

  ‘What proof does the Lang woman have of Robert Brand’s intention?’

  ‘None that I know of.’

  Maȋtre Bertrand carefully removed a speck of fish from his teeth and reached for his wine. ‘There you are then, Paul. There is nothing she can do. And you cannot go against the widow’s wishes. That would be most unwise.’

  ‘I’m concerned that this Lang woman came here to the bank.’

  Bertrand thought about this. ‘Alain told her there was no such account?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then I see no cause for alarm, my dear Paul. I think you are worrying unnecessarily.’

  They parted and Eberhardt walked back to his office. It was a bright, sharp, winter’s afternoon with a light wind blowing off the lake; the kind of day when Geneva is at its best. Normally he would have enjoyed the walk but now he was beset by worry. It was all very well for Claude Bertrand to say there was no cause for alarm. There was plenty of cause for alarm. Who knew what Julia Lang would do? To her $20 million was undoubtedly a fortune; something worth fighting for. What if she went to the Federal Banking Commission?

  ‘There’s something troubling me,’ Cristiani said. He sat back in his chair in Commissioner Bonnet’s office, a tape recorder in his lap.

  ‘I’ve a good idea what it is,’ Bonnet said sourly. ‘How you’re going to exist without someone like me to sign your expense sheets.’ He held up a form. ‘Dinner with contact,’ he read. ‘Three hundred francs.’ He glared at Cristiani. ‘You had to take this contact to the Lion d’Or?’

  ‘As good a place as any,’ Cristiani said.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Bonnet said. ‘Would I be right in assuming this contact was a woman?’

  ‘Berthe Heydecker,’ Cristiani said.

  ‘What?’ Bonnet was incensed. ‘That old hag. What could she possibly tell you? The Journal de Genève should have fired her years ago.’

  ‘She has good sources,’ Cristiani said.

  ‘And what did she tell you over this 300-franc dinner?’ Bonnet asked sarcastically.

  ‘Something very interesting. But first listen to this.’ He switched on the tape recorder. ‘This was a call Eberhardt placed to Grace Brand just after her husband died.’

  Bonnet glared at him, then leaned back in his chair, his hands laced behind his head, gazing at the ceiling as the tape unwound. When it finished he sat forward, his expression changed.

  ‘She’s telling him to break the law.’

  ‘What’s more he’s going to do it. Nice, huh?’

  ‘It’s incredible.’ Bonnet frowned. ‘I can hardly believe it. Who is this woman, Julia Lang?’

  ‘My guess is she was Brand’s girlfriend. Must have been really something – $20 million! You don’t get that for a one-night stand.’

  ‘The way Grace Brand talked to Eberhardt …’ Bonnet shook his head. ‘Dammit, the man is next year’s Chairman of the International Bankers’ Conference in Vienna.’

  ‘I keep telling you,’ Cristiani said. ‘She’s got something on him.’

  ‘What did Heydecker tell you?’

  ‘Julia Lang went to the bank to ask about the account. They said it didn’t exist. She then called Heydecker – they have a mutual friend, apparently – and asked for her help. Heydecker told her she could do nothing.’

  ‘What did the Lang woman do?’

  ‘Went home, apparently.’

  ‘You think she’ll leave it at that?’

  ‘I hope not. I hope she comes to us with a complaint. Then we can take action.’

  ‘Not so much of the “we”,’ Bonnet said heavily. ‘You’re out of here in a week or two.’

  ‘You can take action.’

  ‘It’s a tricky situation,’ Bonnet said. ‘Eberhardt’s an important man. It’s a private bank.’

  ‘He’s breaking the law to please Brand’s widow,’ Cristiani said. ‘There’s got to be a very good reason.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bonnet replied. ‘Money.’

  ‘It’s more than that,’ Cristiani said. ‘The Brand fortune is immense. Twenty million dollars is peanuts to Grace Brand.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Bonnet shook his head again. ‘What in God’s name can Paul Eberhardt be thinking of, doing this?’

  ‘His skin,’ Cristiani said.

  At the end of that week the registration material and programme of events for the forthcoming Travel and Tourism Research Association conference finally arrived. Julia went through it carefully. She was scheduled to speak on the second day. She would be staying at Las Brisas.

  The idea of getting out of London for a few days was appealing. She could forget about her problems for a while, soak up the sun and mix with some interesting people.

  She called Lisa, who had now moved back to her own flat. ‘I just got the papers for that conference in Acapulco I told you about. I’m off next week.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ Lisa said. ‘It’ll do you good. Just make sure you don’t run across that crazy woman.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Julia said. ‘I have the advantage. I know about her but she doesn’t know a damn thing about me.’

  Chapter 29

  The long flight from London left Julia exhausted and irritable. Tired and nervous, she stared out at the lush countryside as the taxi sped along the road towards Acapulco. But once over the mountain as the stunning half-moon bay came into view, her spirits rose. It was breathtaking. There were banks of cotton wool clouds above the mountains to the right. In the bay a Mexican destroyer lay at anchor. Beyond it in the harbour was a white cruise ship. Paragliders soared above the beach. A moment later the taxi swerved into the hillside entrance to Las Brisas Hotel. Julia was glad to discover she already knew some of the other people attending the conference. The time passed quickly. Her speech was judged a great success and she was invited to take part in several of the ensuing discussions. By the end of the second day she found she had made many new friends.

  ‘We need people like you in this association,’ one of the members, a cheery man named Alex Wintour, said. ‘You really know what you’re talking about, and have a real gift for putting it across.’

  Julia, whose morale had been low for so many weeks, began to blossom. With part of the group she drove over to the lagoon half an hour away to lunch on one of the islands. She joined some of the others on a sunset cruise around the bay, then went to La Perla restaurant to watch the Mexican boys diving from the high rocks into the floodlit sea. And, with her new friends, she visited the market to buy Mexican plates and ornaments.

  Julia began to feel invigorated. The sun, ever present, cheered her after the grey shroud that hung over London in wintertime; the friendliness of the Mexican people enchanted her and the professionalism of the TTRA members impressed her.

  On the last day, when she came back from a final swim at La Concha, the hotel’s beach club, she found a handwritten note awaiting her in her room.

  She read it twice, incredulously.

  Mrs Grace Stansfield Brand requests the pleasure of the company of Miss Julia Lang this afternoon for tea. Four o’clock.

  Julia spent the next half-hour in a state of shock. It was unbelievable. Grace Brand knew who she was. How could she? Who could possibly have told her? Even more mystifying, how had she known Julia was there at the hotel?

  Baffled by the sense of unreality she now felt, she paced the room, her thoughts in turmoil. She felt unnerved and vulnerable, all the confidence generated by the past three days destroyed. Grace Brand knew who she was. Had Robert Brand told her? Impossible. She had asked him that. But who else knew of the relationship and, more to the point, knew she was in Acapulco at that moment? She had told only two people – Emma and Lisa – and neither of them would have said a word.

  But as four o’clock approached she found herself becoming curious about the woman she had heard so much about. And wondering what possible reason Grace Brand could have for wanting to meet her. Tea
at four o’clock. It was almost laughable in its old-fashioned formality.

  Still deliberating, Julia sat out for another half-hour in the sun – it was the last time she would see it for many months, she knew – and then made up her mind. She had nothing to lose, she decided. She would go.

  As the taxi turned down a rough side road and bumped and rattled along beside the sparkling bay, Julia found it hard to believe that this was the right way.

  ‘You’re sure?’ she asked the driver, although it was already clear he spoke hardly any English.

  ‘Si, si. Casa Shalimar.’ He pointed ahead.

  At length they turned into a wide square bounded on three sides by trees and flowering bushes and on the other by tall wrought-iron gates. In front loomed a white marble mansion so dramatically poised above the sea it might have been a movie set. Julia recognized it immediately from the magazine pictures she had looked at.

  A white uniformed man emerged from a guard post behind the gates and looked questioningly at Julia. ‘¿Si, señora?’

  ‘My name is Julia Lang. I am here to see Señora Brand.’

  The guard consulted a list in his hand and said something to another man in the guardhouse. The huge gates swung open slowly. Julia entered.

  ‘Please.’ The guard motioned for her to follow him down a flight of steps lined on both sides with bougainvillaea bushes. He handed her over to a young Mexican man wearing a crisp white uniform, who ushered her into a small anteroom. Tall French windows let out to one of the terraces. A side table was laid for tea. Feeling increasingly nervous Julia took a seat on the edge of one of the white sofas. The Mexican stood almost at attention by the door.

  A moment later Grace Brand walked in. She was taller than Julia had expected, a slim woman, deeply tanned, with high cheekbones, dark eyes and a thin mouth. She was wearing a white turban and an ornately patterned caftan. She looked to be in her early sixties but could have been older. She wore no jewellery, but about her was the gloss of money. She stared at Julia for a moment and then dismissed the young Mexican.

  The moment he had gone she walked forward, arms outstretched in greeting. She grasped Julia’s hand warmly. ‘My dear Julia, I’m so glad you were able to come. I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time.’ She took one of the chairs and sat facing Julia, her back straight as a drill sergeant’s.