Out of the Dark Page 26

  The bloody trousers were lying where she’d first put them. He still wasn’t sure why she’d kept them in the first place, but he assumed it was for insurance. That’s what he’d have done and usually they thought about things in the same way. He’d always liked that.

  Lying back in his clean bed, Mikey thought about how he would run things when she’d retired. He’d take custom back from the catalogues and expand the operation into something worth having, and he’d start funding some of the drug addicts. He wouldn’t deal with all of them. She was right that most were too unreliable. But there were some who’d pay up. He’d go for them, a little at a time, as an experiment.

  And he’d move off the estate as soon as he could afford it. He’d decided that long ago, but it had taken a while before he’d worked out what kind of place he wanted. Now he knew. He wanted a loft like Trish Maguire’s, and a gym of his own.

  Soon he’d have other people running round doing all the work, and he’d pull the strings and make the decisions and give the advice. And his nan? Well, she’d be tucked up somewhere, safe and warm, and with plenty of Battenburg cakes to keep her happy. Mikey would see to that. He’d see her right in every way. Give her her cut whenever it was due, just like he collected her pension for her now. He wasn’t going to rip her off.

  ‘Mikey? You in there?’

  ‘Yes, Nan. D’you need something?’ He got off the bed and pulled on his sweats.

  ‘I’ve got the kettle on. D’you want some breakfast?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m going to go to the gym. I’ll have something after. Shall I bring you anything when I come back?’

  ‘I need more fags,’ she said, which was a first. She knew what he felt about them. Was this another test? He put on his trainers and went out to see.

  He ran the long way round to the gym so that he could pass Trish Maguire’s building. It took him seven minutes longer, but it was worth it to monitor her comings and goings. And he liked being at the point where the borough started to get rich. You stepped from one world into the next just crossing a single road. It showed him how easy it was going to be for him to get away from all the failures on the estate and have the life he should’ve had all along.

  All Trish Maguire’s windows were shut today, which told him she’d already gone out. She wasn’t usually off so early. He wondered what was happening and where her fat boyfriend was.

  Antony had drilled Trish backwards and forwards through the evidence, finding connections she’d never even guessed at. Almost able to forget about her father and Jeannie Nest, she’d been exhilarated by the process and full of more admiration for Antony than she’d have confessed to anyone. As he’d asked her questions, she’d watched him untwist the ropes of fact and straighten every strand, before whipping them together again in unrecognisable forms.

  At the end, he put his hands behind his back and stretched so that the tendons in his neck cracked.

  ‘Good. Well, I think we’re ready for Nick now.’ He looked at his shabby old watch. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘In the waiting room, I imagine,’ Trish said, laughing as she got to her feet. She felt released from some of the last weeks’ angst. This was her world. She was OK here.

  Nick came in with such a broad smile she felt as though he’d flung his arms around her.

  ‘Trish! I’m so glad you haven’t abandoned me.’

  ‘Of course not. You look well.’

  ‘Thank you. I wish I could return the compliment, but I have to say you look exhausted. I hope it’s not because you’ve been toiling over my wretched case.’

  ‘You should be glad she has, Nick,’ said Antony. ‘She’s done a very good job. Sit down, Trish, and let’s get going.’

  She exchanged tightly polite smiles with the Sprindlers partner, whose trainee had sent her the treacherous note. He didn’t look half as pleased to see her as Nick was.

  ‘Now, Nick, we need to run through one or two things, so that I have everything clear in my mind,’ Antony said. ‘Just tell me in your own words how you came to design the MegaPerformance Bond Fund.’

  As he obeyed, explaining every stage of his plans, Nick kept up the boyish enthusiasm with which he’d greeted them. It was quite unlike the smoothness he’d originally shown Trish, and she liked it better.

  ‘Right,’ Antony said as Nick finished describing the drafting of the documents for the fund. ‘Is anyone putting pressure on you by this stage?’

  ‘Good lord! Of course they are. It’s been made abundantly clear that if I don’t come up with something pronto, I’ll be out on my ear.’

  ‘And does that distress you?’

  ‘Absolutely terrifies me.’

  ‘Even though, when you do decide to leave, you pick up a good job back in the City at a greatly enhanced salary?’

  ‘Even so. You’ve no idea what the atmosphere at the DOB is like. Was like. It may have changed. Margins were so tight, and the shareholders so angry, and the board so desperate, that they spent the whole time sniping. Panic turns people into bullies, you know.’

  Antony nodded. He didn’t even glance at Trish, but she could feel his awareness of her and his determination that she should understand the message he wanted her to take from Gurles’s account.

  ‘Was the MegaPerformance Bond Fund the first product you’d taken to them after the launch of the Big-Day Booster Account was so successful?’

  ‘Lord no! I’d been battering my head against the brick wall of their negativity for months. They nagged me to produce stuff, then wouldn’t let me do anything with it. Every idea I came up with – and some of them were damn good – was turned down. Sometimes I thought they might be using me as a weapon against the shareholders – you know, to prove they were trying. After a while I was sure they were planning to offer my head at the AGM.’

  Trish kept her face blank, but she was intrigued by the story Antony was drawing out of their client. She wondered whether someone had briefed Nick to rearrange it, or whether he’d refrained from telling it this way in the first place because he hadn’t wanted to look like a wimp in front of a woman. She could see how the facts and documents she’d so carefully amassed might support it, but it wasn’t quite what he’d told her earlier in the year. On the other hand, it was something they could use more easily.

  Clever old George, she thought with a private smile.

  ‘Right,’ Antony said sharply, bringing her back into focus. She nodded to him to prove that she was awake. ‘But then suddenly they did want you to put one of your ideas into practice. Is that what happened?’

  ‘Yes. They remembered the MegaPerformance Bond Fund and asked for all the papers again. I provided them. They suddenly got all over-excited and said they must have it up and running within a month. It was the most incredible scramble to get everything done and all the documents drafted, but we worked twenty-hour days and just made it.’

  ‘Right. I see. And did you yourself have any doubts about it?’

  ‘Well, of course I did. Who wouldn’t? I mean, all investments carry risk. I didn’t have any idea it would go belly up so fast or so spectacularly. I’d never have presented it to the board in the first place, if I had.’

  ‘And did you express your reservations?’

  ‘Absolutely. But face to face. I never wrote to anyone about them, so there’s no documentary evidence. Unfortunately.’

  ‘Yes. Now we come to this memo here.’ Antony pointed to the note that had caused Trish such problems. ‘The one that includes a paragraph about “the other matter”. Can you tell me why you didn’t email it? I think all your other communications with your head of department were emails. Why wasn’t this?’

  ‘I can’t imagine.’ Gurles uncrossed his legs and leaned forwards. ‘But there must have been a reason at the time. Occasionally we had server problems. It could’ve been that the screens were down that day, and I didn’t want to wait. But it’s not relevant to this, you know. It had nothing to do with the MegaPerformance Bond. It was abo
ut a savings account we were thinking of setting up for students, which never went anywhere.’

  ‘Right. Well, the state of the server shouldn’t be impossible to check,’ Antony said. Trish looked at Gurles, but couldn’t see any anxiety. Maybe it was even true that the server had been down. She still wasn’t convinced of the genuine otherness of ‘the other matter’, but she’d just heard Gurles claim it, unprompted, and so she could – just – keep her doubts to herself.

  ‘Good. Then I think that’s all I need.’ Antony’s eyes twinkled. He looked like everybody’s favourite uncle. Trish didn’t believe in the expression for a moment, and she knew exactly what he’d been doing. When he turned to her, the twinkle was doused. ‘Trish, is there anything else you’d like to ask Nick while he’s here?’

  ‘Yes, one or two things.’

  ‘Fire away,’ Nick said, swivelling in his chair so that he was facing her. He looked strong and serious, but affectionate with it. More and more she got the feeling he’d been coached. But she had enough faith to know it wouldn’t have been Antony who’d done it.

  ‘You’ve read the depositors’ statements about the losses they incurred on the fund?’

  ‘Yes. A lot of very sad stories, aren’t they?’

  ‘In the light of those, can you still say that the marketing of the fund and the terms and conditions were clear enough to protect the naive investor?’ Her tone was deliberately provocative and it duly provoked him.

  ‘Come on, Trish. This bond was paying five per cent over the odds. Everyone knows you get increased risk with increased rewards. If they were greedy enough to want so much more than they’d have got in any of the DOB’s entirely safe accounts, or in gilts, then they deserved to lose it.’

  Trish sat back in her chair and looked at Antony, all her body language saying, ‘I rest my case,’ like an American attorney.

  ‘As I’ve explained before,’ Gurles went on, decoding the gestures without too much difficulty, ‘no bank is in business to protect investors. It’s in business to make money for its shareholders, not its depositors.’

  ‘Fine,’ Antony said. ‘Now that we’ve got all that emotion out of the way, we must press on with the facts of the case.’

  Trish wanted to get up and walk out, but she’d committed herself now. Nothing Gurles had actually said surprised her; it was the venom with which he’d talked about his investors’ greed that had given her the shock.

  Later, when he and the Sprindlers partner had gone, Antony said quietly, ‘So, Trish: better or worse?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘And you wish we were for the depositors?’

  ‘Of course. But then I’ve always preferred being for victims.’

  ‘Nick Gurles is one of those.’

  ‘Only just.’

  ‘But enough for you to do your best?’

  ‘I’d do that anyway, as you very well know. But yes, I think he is. Just.’

  ‘And you’re sanguine about the document?’

  ‘I have to be. Nick claimed that “the other matter” had nothing to do with the bond fund, so I have to accept it.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘Do you ever feel, Antony, as though you’re counting—’

  ‘Angels on a pinhead? Of course. That’s part of the job. And one of the most entertaining parts. But you know that, Trish. You’re bloody good at it yourself. One of the tough guys in spite of your white face and your scruples. Ouf, it’s been a long day. What about a drink? I don’t have to be home for another forty minutes.’

  ‘I’d love to, but I have to get back. I’ve got this business of the boy from the car crash to sort out still.’ And I’ve got to find out whether my father’s been arrested for murder yet. She opened her mouth to tell Antony about it, then shut it fast. It couldn’t happen. Paddy had to be innocent. Therefore there couldn’t be any evidence against him. Therefore the police would never arrest him.

  ‘Is the boy giving you problems?’

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle. It’s all just a bit emotional.’

  ‘Ah. Well, I’m sure you’ll sort it out. You’re good at emotion,’ he said, talking so fast he was almost gabbling. He couldn’t have made his intentions clearer if he’d written them out on a hoarding: Do not try to embroil me in your personal life.

  He was right, too. It wasn’t his problem. But it might be George’s. And it was time now to talk about it. Walking home towards the bridge, Trish hardly noticed her favourite view of the piled, pinkish-white buidings, topped by the great grey dome of St Paul’s, or the fact that a strip of sunlight was lying along the Thames like a gold sword. She was sure now that she would have to take David to live with her, whatever happened to Paddy.

  As Frankie Mason had pointed out, David’s mother had trusted Trish to look after him. And she was his half-sister. But there would inevitably be problems, and she wasn’t at all sure that George would welcome them. If it came to a choice between the two, what would she do?

  It couldn’t come to a choice. There wasn’t one to be made. She couldn’t abandon her brother to the care system, and she couldn’t face life without George. Treacherous thoughts sneaked into her mind about how much easier solitude was than dealing with other people. But she was long past that stage. George had taken her into a world where being open to someone else was not only possible but essential. She couldn’t go back.

  There were windows open in the flat, which meant he’d let himself in and was probably cooking something nutritious in the hope of tempting her to eat again. She realised she was hungry for the first time in weeks.

  The door opened while she was still four steps from the top and he stood there, holding out his arms, with the glorious scent of his own version of bouillabaisse floating all round him.

  ‘Hello, Shorty,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. She tipped it back on her neck, feeling the tendons crunch, to kiss him properly. Then her lips stiffened.

  ‘What, Trish?’ George sounded as though his patience was held on a short leash. ‘What is it now?’

  ‘I’ve just thought of something. I must make a phone call.’

  ‘No! Unless someone’s in danger of life and limb, Trish, you must have your soup first.’

  ‘I’m fine, George. I had lunch – a sandwich. I’m fine.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. I’ve spent the past two hours making this soup and I’m not having it thrown in my face. Is anyone in danger of life and limb?’

  There was enough reality mixed with his mocking voice to make her stop. She smiled, and completed the kiss before putting her arm round his waist and sweeping him into the flat.

  ‘Sorry. I got carried away. The soup smells wonderful. Let’s have it, while I tell you what I’ve just realised.’

  He grinned and tapped her cheek with one saffron-coloured finger. ‘OK. Pour the wine. I’ll just fry the croutons and then we’re there.’

  The soup poured from his ladle into warm white bowls like rosy cream with chunks of white fish in it. He sprinkled cheese on top, then spread even more vibrantly coloured rouille on to his newly fried rounds of mini-baguette, before floating them like votive coracles across the surface of the soup.

  Trish picked up her spoon and tasted it. Like almost everything George cooked, it was ambrosial. She gave it, and him, the compliment of silent eating until she was halfway down the bowl. Then she drank some of the sharp, cold wine, sat back, and said, ‘You’ve been very patient with all this hassle about my father. Not asking qustions and all that.’

  A sardonic smile twisted his face. ‘You were in that mood where questions only make you miserable – or angry. I didn’t fancy dealing with either and I knew you’d tell me in the end. You always do. More soup before you start?’

  She shook her head, admiring the way he managed his feelings so neatly, with so little waste of spirit. She’d learned a lot from him, but she still hadn’t got the trick of this. ‘No. I’ll finish this while I tell you, then we can have hot seconds while you point out where the gaps in the argument ar
e. You always see those far better than I do.’

  He blew her a kiss, then picked up his own spoon again.

  She told him again about the night David crashed into her life, her gradual realisation of who he must be, and Bella’s recent confirmation that he was, indeed, her half-brother. Trish waited there in case George wanted to say anything, but he just nodded and reached a big hand for more croutons, which he spread with great delicacy, handing her one.

  The physical softness of the orange emulsion lying between her tongue and palate made the fiery taste even more shocking. But it was the kind of shock she enjoyed. In a way it seemed rather like George himself. Apparently gentle, domesticated, almost as padded as his well-covered bones, he packed a real punch. He was full of the kind of acerbic intelligence anyone else would have paraded at every possible opportunity. Not George. It was there for anyone who bothered to find it, but he’d never use it for aggrandisement – or aggression.

  He’d never have made it at the Bar, she thought with a hidden spurt of laughter as she considered the mix of self-importance and histrionics so many of her colleagues felt was essential to their calling.

  Swallowing the laughter and the crouton, she went on to tell him the story from the other end. She repeated everything she’d heard from Frankie, from David himself, and from Lakeshaw’s hints and evasions.

  ‘And it’s David’s comment about the eyes, you see. He knew they weren’t a cat’s because they were too high, though if the cat had been sitting on the wall they’d have been too low.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, my father once told me that Jeannie Nest was my height or a little taller. David also said that Mrs Tiggywinkle liked to sit on the wall and lick his mother’s nose. Now that sounds as though Mrs Tiggywinkle’s eyes would have been about on a level with Jeannie Nest’s. Which suggests that the person whose eyes scared David so much was shorter than his mother.’