Due Diligence (6 page)

‘Okay, give them fifty,’ Henry tells Owen. ‘But that’s it.’

Owen punches a fist in the air, strides back to his desk and shouts, ‘Stuff that fuckin’ moosehead!’

Henry toys with his deal-sheet. ‘What’s this with Karen then?’

‘Karen thinks Daniel’s note looks like some losses we took out here in the Room.’

‘So?’

‘Your name was on the note.’ At this, Henry looks up. ‘It said, “See Henry’,’ I tell him.

He shakes his head unhappily. ‘Last time she was chasin’ a problem down here, I was stuffed-in two nights runnin’. 1 a.m., 2 a.m. Me and Daniel both.’

‘She’s conscientious.’

‘She’s a fuckin’ zealot.’

‘Just make the right noises,’ I say. ‘Keep her happy. If she pushes too hard, let me know.’

‘Can’t you put her off?’ There is a note of real despair in his voice. I tell him I’ve delegated that particular responsibility. When he asks me who to, I just smile. Henry groans.

A hand reaches over the screens and dumps a pile of deal-sheets in front of him.

'Fuck,’ Henry says. He picks up a pen and flicks through the deal-sheets, countersigning each one as he goes.

7

T
he rain has stopped. I send my driver home, telling him I won’t need him till Monday. It’s cold and dark, the wet pavement lit by streetlamps and the headlights of passing cars. The Square Mile is winding down now, the push and shove of commerce following the daylight to another part of the globe. The other pedestrian are just like me, huddled in their coats and bowing their heads against the chill wind. A bleak night in the City of London. Lights shine from some of the office buildings, but most are unlit.

It was like this when Daniel and I used to pace these streets over a decade ago. I don’t know how many hours we spent wandering the City and scheming: too many, I suppose. We thought the future was something we’d make, a blank page to be written on. He'd rise through Treasury, become Treasurer one day, and turn our Dealing Room into something special. He did become Treasurer, and our Dealing Room grew, but the truth is it remains what you’d expect of a small British merchant, nothing special. And me? I was going to take over from my father and drive us into the world, re-make Carltons into what it was last century, into what my grandfather believed it could still be: a player on the international stage. One year short of my fortieth birthday, I can finally admit to myself that this will not happen. Sir John still holds the reins at Carlton Brothers, the big international players have arrived in the City, and on the home front, within the Carlton family, life has intervened.

Mounting the church steps, I hear the organ: something by Bach. Evensong is over now, but two old women have stayed, they sit up by the altar and listen to the organist practising as I slide into a pew near the door. A clergyman, grey-haired and shuffling, is reordering the hymn books. There's no haste in his movements. Time isn’t money here, time is God’s, a fragment of eternity. It’s the kind of place my mother would have liked; but though I’ve passed it often, I’ve never been inside before.

‘Can I help you?’ The clergyman has paused, hymn books in hand.

When I turn my head, he goes back to his gentle task. Then the music stops. There's the sound of turning pages, and the two old ladies crane round and look up to the choir loft above my head, After a moment the organist finds his place and the music continues. A hymn this time. The women turn back to the altar. The clergyman makes his way down to the front and disappears into the vestry.

As the organ note swells for the refrain, I take a kneeler from the pew and place it on the floor. And this time when the music stops, I get to my knees and I pray.

SATURDAY

1

I
tell Margie ‘no eggs,’ but she slides two onto my plate anyway. Our guests at the big kitchen table talk as they eat, and Margie, the housekeeper here at Boddington, goes back to the stove. The Duke has brought his two youngest daughters; and the girls sit on the high kitchen bench. I wink and they turn away giggling. Voices ring across the kitchen: the families and friends of those shooting have all crowded in.

Charles Aldridge leans over to me and says quietly, ‘All right?’

I don’t know if he means the business with Darren Lyle, or breakfast, or if he’s enquiring about my state of mind. But when I nod he seems satisfied.

As usual lately, I haven’t slept well. The bed Daniel used on his boyhood visits still sits beneath the window in my room; and on the landing this morning I noticed the cracks in the old Chinese vase, the results of our hasty glue-work after Daniel misjudged a slide down the banister. I’d hoped for some respite here at Boddington but there are just too many signs that remain.

‘Gentlemen?’

My father. He produces a leather pouch, and those of us shooting step up to draw our numbers. I draw between Charles and Mahmoud Iqbal, the Lebanese owner of a neighbouring estate, and ten minutes later, in a convoy of battered Land Rovers and four-wheel drives, we set out.

Ours isn’t the largest estate in Gloucestershire, or even the most profitable, but the roots of my family run deep here. There were Carltons on this land in Elizabethan times when the peerage first came to us, and now, driving up the valley, I look back to the house - Cotswold stone, eighteenth century - and beyond to the five acres of garden that roll down to the river. Daniel and I fished that river last May. We skirt the arable fields, finally stopping by a hedgerow where the gamekeeper waits. Walking to the first pegs, the frosted ground crunches beneath my boots, and I feel life - real life — returning.

‘Theresa did not come today?’ Mahmoud.

‘No,’ I tell him. ‘She’s at her parents’. She’ll be down tomorrow.’ There’s a memorial service for my mother, it wouldn’t look right for Theresa to stay away.

Mahmoud, dressed in tweed, touches his moustache absentmindedly. ‘Good shot, Theresa.’

But when the gamekeeper signals us up to the first line I try to forget about my wife. I try to forget the bank and Daniel too. My father gave me an air- rifle when I was seven, a .22 when I was ten and a shotgun three years later; even as a boy I took my troubles out into the fields.

Now it begins. The beaters drive the pheasants from cover and we stand by our numbered pegs and fire; behind us there are compliments from family and friends. The gamekeeper blows his whistle — silence as the last shots fade — then the dogs race to gather the fallen birds. We switch to safety, unload, and exchange polite banter down the line. The last bird picked, we move to the next stand. So it goes on, our idleness structured into the semblance of purpose all morning. My head gradually clears, and by midday I’m shooting quite well. An hour later and I’ve bagged more than ten brace.

Walking across to the barn for lunch, Charles steps up beside me. ‘Plenty of birds,’ he says. There’d need to be, the way he shoots, but I keep this uncharitable thought to myself. Instead I explain that the new keeper put them down early. ‘Lyle gave quite a performance, I hear,’ he says. The Commons Committee. ‘Made things rather uncomfortable for your father.’

I remind him that I was there.

‘Quite,’ he says ruefully ‘Has to be dealt with.’ Then he pockets an unused cartridge. ‘We hoped you might have some thoughts, Raef.’

‘I don’t want Carltons involved.’

‘After Lyle’s little effort?’ A significant pause, then he touches my elbow. ‘We’ll talk this evening.’

A misty rain has begun to fall, I feel the world closing in. The clean, clear morning is over.

2

S
ir John considers the whisky in his glass. ‘Vance is the obvious choice.’ Then he looks from my father to me. There are only four of us here by the drawing-room fire. Mary Needham left after dinner: business in London, she said, a tactfulness my mother would have appreciated. Sir John’s wife has retired upstairs. It is my job we’re discussing, a possible replacement: after Daniel’s death there will have to be a reshuffle at the bank.

‘Raef?’ my father prompts.

‘It has to be Vance,’ I agree. Then I face Sir John. ‘This isn’t a question until you fix a date.’ The date of his retirement, not a subject he broaches easily. He keeps his eyes lowered. My father does too: it was his move into politics, his early retirement from Carltons, that first raised Sir John into place. Sir John has held this supposedly temporary position for three years now, and I am more than a little tired of waiting for my chance to take over.

My father wonders aloud who will become Head of Treasury. I suggest Henry Wardell.

‘You could look outside again,’ Aldridge says. ‘That Mannetti’s worked out, hasn’t he?’

In fact Tony Mannetti has worked out well, certainly better than I expected. He came to us from American Pacific, an aggressively expanding US bank with which we recently crossed swords. At Carltons we tend to promote internally, there was much debate before we decided to elevate Mannetti to head of Funds Management. I was the major opponent of the move, but the department seems to be responding, albeit sluggishly, to his pushy style. Still, I’m not entirely convinced. He has a short fuse and a temper which he occasionally unleashes on his subordinates, a trait I find less than endearing.

We toss a few more names around, other possibilities, but nobody mentions Daniel directly: it is always the title, Head of Treasury, as if Daniel’s name is taboo. After a few minutes I can’t bear any more of it and I stand and wander off around the room. It’s dark in the far comers where the family portraits hang, but nearer there’s a small Breughel, one of those winter scenes: peasants, snow-covered houses and a broad river of ice. My mother bought it in Paris, it was one of her favourite pictures. The flickering firelight plays across the human warmth and conviviality of the scene, a stark contrast to the disagreement developing between Charles Aldridge and Sir John behind me.

Between my father’s two friends there has always been a certain antagonism. They're very similar in many ways, but their disagreements these days seem to become more and more heated. Sir John’s appointment as Carltons’ Managing Director certainly didn’t help, but it runs deeper than that. They seem, at times, to be competing for my father’s friendship. He’s a few years older than them, and despite their both being over sixty they seem to look up to him. And I’m sure it’s more than just the title. In recent years Sir John’s star has been on the wane, and now it is Charles my father generally turns to for advice over a quiet drink in the evening.

Their sallies go back and forth now, till the mantel-clock strikes ten. When I return to the fireside, Sir John, who has been flagging, takes himself off to bed. My father stokes the fire.

‘Charles put some feelers out in Whitehall,’ he says. ‘About that Select Committee business.’

‘Wolsey’s in it up to his eyeballs,’ Charles puts in. ‘He and Lyle both. That woman, what’s her name? The MP?’ My father mentions the name. Charles nods. ‘Ex-CND ratbag. Got a bee in her bonnet about Defence. Wolsey primed her, had to have done.’

So it was a set-up, just as it seemed. But any illusions I harboured about Whitehall and Westminster were dispelled years ago. I ask where Lyle comes in.

‘Wolsey’s chairing the DTI Committee that's been working with Lyle’s City Committee,’ he tells me.

I’m out of my depth here: any problems we have with Westminster I leave to my father; Charles takes care of Whitehall. Now I ask him what he thinks Wolsey’s after.

Like an otter into the stream, Aldridge plunges in. He sketches the outlines of a battle currently raging between the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Trade and Industry. It seems the President of the Board of Trade is pushing to grant the tender for the next-generation sea-to-air weapons systems to a failing British manufacturer: the Ministry of Defence wants to buy American. Wolsey was the man who convinced the DTI President to nail his colours to the mast over the issue, and now he is pulling every string to make sure this particular ship doesn't go down. If the Ministry of Defence win the debate the DTI President will be acutely embarrassed. Heads will roll; most notably Gerald Wolsey’s. Charles elaborates on the complex web of pressures: he loves all this, it’s meat and drink to him.

I raise a hand to stop the flow. ‘Does Wolsey get anything if they win?’

‘If he pushes the policy through?’ Charles raises a brow. ‘Promotion. A seat at the High Table.’

‘That doesn’t interest Darren Lyle.’

Charles turns to my father with a significant look.

‘Raef,’ my father says quietly. ‘We think Lyle might make a bid for the bank.’

It takes a moment for this to register. ‘Carltons?’

My father nods stiffly. There are dark rings, I now notice, beneath his eyes. Charles goes to the fireplace to warm his hands. He explain that if Lyle raises enough questions, Wolsey can justify sending a team of DTI investigators into Carltons.

‘Where’d you hear this?’

‘Once they’re in,’ he continues, ignoring my question, ‘Wolsey will use anything they find as ammunition against your father. He’ll also pass it to Lyle. Lyle will use it against you.’

I put down my glass. I still can’t believe this.

Charles gives a world-weary smile, pushing a hand through his thick silver mane. ‘No love lost between you two, is there?’

‘There’s a lot of people Lyle doesn’t like.’

‘The man’s poison,’ my father remarks. He knows about my run-in with Lyle. ‘He's not all there. He might do anything.’

‘It is possible, isn't it?’ Aldridge asks me.

‘A bid for Carltons?’

‘Yes. I mean there’s nothing to stop him, is there?’

‘It’s possible,’I concede. ‘Unlikely, but possible.’

‘And what if he can drive your share price down first?’

I consider that. It’s standard practice for a bidder to talk down a target company, but with a small bank like ours the collateral damage might escalate uncontrollably. ‘Unlikely, isn’t it? Where's the gain? Two British independents, what does that make? A bigger minnow?’