Gatecrasher (35 page)

No matter now though. The short slot on the News had finished and she had not turned her head from the screen yet though minutes had passed.

Asquith had contacted him earlier in the day to tell him what time to switch on his television and to inform him, almost apologetically Campbell had thought, that with the pulling of a few strings, the item had been tucked quietly away in the middle of the programme.

‘In what has been described as a significant policy-shift, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development today announced that they had awarded three major engineering and construction contracts to local Malaysian firms for a controversial Dam Project in that country. The contracts, worth in the region of £75 million, had been expected to go to a number of more well-established British based firms tendering and who had undertaken such projects in the past. The Minister for the Department of International Development Geoffrey Asquith said earlier this evening, that this decision will allow the
full
benefits of the project to be felt at every level of the community.’

After another minute had passed and Sarah’s eyes remain fixed ahead of her,
Campbell
jabbed the remote toward the TV set and silenced it.

‘How long would you have kept it up?’ he asked quietly. ‘What was the plan?’

Sarah turned and looked at him. Her smile was uncertain and her eyes did little to mask what was going on behind them. ‘I- I can’t believe you pulled it off!’ she said and then swallowed. ‘Change-‘

Campbell
waited for her to go on but she seemed to have choked on the words.

‘Change of plan? Tack? Direction?’ he suggested for her. ‘Little bit yeah. I had a real bolt of inspiration at the last minute.’

Sarah nodded at him, her eyes still wide, smile still fixed in place.

‘How long then?’

‘Daniel, what
–
,
’
but he cut her off dead in mid-sentence with a look of cold, naked contempt.

‘How long Sarah? Couple of weeks? Months? What? I figured you’d maybe play along for a bit, all hugs and eyelashes and then maybe play the you-remind-me-too-much-of-what-hap
pened-card. Something like that?
Too traumatised by what we went through to be able to keep seeing me.’

The smile was gone now and her mouth hung open.
Campbell
had to break his gaze off then and he stood and stalked across to the other side of the room.

‘It was an accident you know. How I found out. A fluke. I’d heard the name before of course. I mean, he’s a bit of a name these days in the industry and, well you know, it’s my job. I think I missed it the first time, just skimmed straight past. But it was the stuff that George and Slater got for me that did it. I needed something to convince Asquith that I wasn’t mad – stop me if this is familiar – so the job I asked them to do, the documents that those boys stole were exactly what I needed. But his name was all over them too.
I mean, not just his of course. But Ben Wishart just stood out.
’
Campbell
paused and looked at her but her eyes were not on him but fixed somewhere in the middle distance.

‘God bless search engines eh? I ran him through a couple and found all the us
ual stuff – the
professional profile on the company website, couple of people with the same name keeping on-line diaries about Christ knows what. And then a picture of him. It was in the trade press so it was tucked away but I recognised it properly then. Special Commendation in Global Equity Funds sector wasn’t it? Not bad going really. Tough competition. And the photo was of him at the awards function in his black tie and his girlfriend – sorry – fiancé, on his arm.’

She looked at him then finally but her expression told him nothing. It was empty.

‘Red really is your colour.’

Campbell
could see the muscles around here eyes begin to twitch before the first tear spilled out onto her cheek. He looked away, determined to be resolute.

‘I mean really Sarah, you’re a looker anyway. Don’t think that was lost o
n me. In fact you know that it wa
sn’t don’t you? But
you
really scrubbed up well that night. Really. Wow! … And you know what? I knew then. The absolute fucking nanosecond that I saw the picture that I didn’t need to check the date. Not because I remembered the article or when the awards were. I just knew right then. I did check of course. Checked and checked and checked again because – fuck you Sarah – because I really wanted to be wrong.’

‘When? When did you figure it out
?’ she said finally but her voice sounded small in the room.

‘Just in time. In time to fix everything. Make a few alterations to the plan. See at first I thought maybe you
ha
d just let me think there was no boyfriend. Maybe to make it easier on me, to make me feel better when I was so fucking scared and confused and vulnerable. I told myself that maybe you’d just let the lie get out of hand. Seriously. Believe that shit? I really told myself that. I even tried to convince myself that you didn’t know that he was in on it. Jesus!’

She was staring at her hands clasped in her lap and saying nothing. When she lifted her head
Campbell
was holding a box of tissues out to her and she took the box, thanking him quietly.

‘So Horner and your o
ther half
Ben meet through work and Horner recognises in Ben the qualities he so fruitfully puts to use himself. They cook up this plot, plant you inside Griffin to be the person on the ground, keep an eye on everything, set
it all
up and all that and then they start getting the money invested. When everything is ready to go, you give the instructions on what to look for and where to find it so that
Gresham
’s boys can do the break in without a hitch – oops! –
make it look like an outside job
and then sit back and let Horner take care of blackmailing Asquith. I turn up sniffing around and you decide to keep an eye on me to make sure I don’t wreck everything… But what went wrong in
Cornwall
? I can only presume that Ben didn’t tell Horner in time to call that guy off. Unless Ben is really as big a shitbag as Horner and was happy to let him bump his own fiancé off for the sake of a few quid. But what I can’t really work out is why you were ready to let me ruin it all – or at least ruin Horner. I imagine that you two had cash in this – Ben got his first million pound bonus two years ago right? I read about that. So then he just rearranges the investment of your own money accordingly and then you stand back and let me set up Horner’s downfall. Why?’

‘You’re making a lot of guesses Dan. You don’t really know anything do you?’

‘Am I getting warm?’

Sarah looked at him in the eye for the first time since the News item and gone were the tears and the emotion, switched off easily when she saw how little use they were, how little effect it had made on
Campbell
. This was a person
Campbell
did not recognise.

‘Warm yes. But not as close as you think. I’d been at
Griffin
for about six months when Ben mentioned Michael Horner. It was a coincidence, nothing more. Ben kept getting
snippets
from Horner about what he’d done in the past, about some of the dodgy stuff he was mixed up in but he only ever dropped hints. Such an arrogant man. So preoccupied with the impression he makes, with his reputation. He was just trying to impress Ben most of the time but after a while we thought that maybe there was something to it. So I started to dig around at work and found out about the arms shipments, about
Africa
. Ben and I came up with a plan to blackmail Horner with it, get our hands on some real cash and go off somewhere. Give up work. He’s loaded you know?
Horner.
Totally fucking loaded. But then when we confronted him with what we had he just turned around and laughed. He said ‘Is that the best you can do?’ and told us we should have a little more ambition. Eventually the two of them came up with the idea of the aid contract blackmail of Asquith. The Dam Scam Ben called it.’ She laughed humourlessly at this.

‘Genius,’
Campbell
replied sarcastically.

‘It was all in place and we were supposed to wait until Horner got to Asquith and then we’d collect our winnings. When you showed up I was worried that you’d go to the police or something and we already had everything under control. You’re right – I decided to try to keep an eye on you. We decided. I did come round to see you that night like I said. Saw you getting dragged off and I thought that maybe
Gresham
would deal with you. Keep you quiet, out of the way. But when you called me that day and I was halfway to
Cornwall
I was pretty surprised. I played the indignant employee of course, didn’t want to raise your suspicions by agreeing to see you right away or turn the car around. So then you show up, tell me you know pretty much everything that’s going on and I’m thinking that if we don’t do something, you’re going to ruin two years of work. I’d been running around in that shitty secretary job for two years! Two years of being totally fucking bored
, just waiting it all out
. No way I was going to let you wreck everything.’

‘And the guy that turned up at the cottage? Why didn’t you just stay there on the sofa and let him cut me up?’

‘You were right about that too. I left you that afternoon and called Ben. We decided that we should try to use you to
manipulate things, W
e wanted to get Horner out of the way. Ben hated him. Really hated him. Since we came in with him on the deal he just got into our lives too much, had too much control over the whole thing. He was running the show,
but
getting Ben to do all the running around, all the hard work, and I was stuck in a job that was really killing me to stick at. But he insisted that it looked less suspicious with Ben dealing with a lot of the paperwork, helped cover our tracks by spreading things out a bit. And he said that I needed to stay there all the way through to keep on top of everything – I was his “point man” he said. Christ! We thought that with you on board we had a secret weapon. Ben and I could still make a bundle, could still go through with the deal but we could get rid of Horner. Ben thought that after this we’d maybe never get away from him, didn’t trust him to just let us walk away – we would be a threat to him just because we knew and Ben was starting to worry about what would happen to us afterwards. By then though, Horner had already sent the man to follow you and get rid of you and Ben could hardly tell Horner that you were with me. That would have blown everything so I took a chance. I’d searched around the cottage and the fields nearby to see if I could find anyone – if they’d followed you down there with me I thought I could find him, not many places to hid
e round there. Anyway,
no sign.

‘So I started playing nice with the food and the hot bath and all that. Smiling and listening and talking to you. I was as scared as you when he appeared, never ran so fast in my life. When you left me in those trees I didn’t think you were coming back. After that it all started falling into place, I could see what you were thinking, what you were trying to do and it suited us perfectly. Until you decided to go to the police. I went along with you, fol
lowed you here to the flat hop
ing that I might talk you out of it but I was thinking on my feet and I didn’t really know what I was going to do then. I even considered seducing you just to stall you. And then Slater turned up and the other guys and everything went crazy. After I got out of
Gresham
’s place and that guy drove me home I made him take me straight to Ben’s place. The whole thing was just a nightmare but you’d already told me what you were planning by then so as soon as you told me that you had convinced George to help you we figured that we were through the worst of it.’

Campbell
listened to Sarah’s confession in silence. He had dropped into a chair at the table and could not take his eyes off her as she spoke, could not fathom how dispassionate she was about the whole thing, could not understand how completely he had been used, deceived and manipulated. Since he had made the shocking discovery about Sarah and her fiancé he had wondered how much she had been involved in the plan. Was she merely tagging along with the two other men, a passenger? Or was her role in this more active? He had found himself hoping that it was the former, that she was the kind and decent person that he had come to see her as. But as he had stared at the picture of her with her fund-manager boyfriend taken less than two months ago he knew that it was not true.

Listening to her now
Campbell
’s initial shock was tempered by a growing sense of detachment. Hearing her talk about what she had done with not a shred of remorse, about how she had felt all through, how she had suffered. She was indifferent to
Campbell
’s own fate. He noted that her observation that he may not return when he had left her to tackle their attacker on the Cornish clifftop held no sense of regret, no suggestion that she had been upset by the prospect. She had simply noted it, remarked on the event, the outcome of which seemed to hold little interest for her.