Learning curves (24 page)

28

Harriet looked out through the glass walls of her office. She used to get a kick out of the view out over the open plan, seeing her staff working, her dreams becoming a reality. But now all she saw was the beginning of the end. Malcolm had given her an hour to make a decision—the time it took him to go and buy himself a coffee and read the newspaper. Two mundane acts which had now been completed, and she was here deciding the future of her firm.

She picked up her accounts and stared at them desultorily. Green Futures owed . . . well, as far as she could make out, they owed more than they could hope to make in five years. Perhaps Dashed Hopes would be a more suitable name for the firm. Or even No Futures. How had she convinced herself that everything was fine? And where was Paul when she needed him most? He’d barely been here lately—probably deserting a sinking ship, and who could really blame him?

Harriet smiled ruefully. She felt suddenly older as she experienced the hindsight that one has when something is over. What had she wanted to do when she started out—save the world? No, that’s what she’d told herself and everyone else, but in reality it was more basic than that. And far less noble. She’d wanted to prove a point. She’d wanted to show George just how wrong he was.

Harriet sighed. She had been so in love with George back then. He had been . . . dazzling. Exciting. And she’d loved working with him, even though he was the most pigheaded man. They’d disagreed constantly, of course, but she hadn’t minded that; it meant they’d enjoyed big arguments, debates that would last for days, making her feel alive and part of something.

What she couldn’t take was when George stopped arguing with her and ignored her instead. Not long after they were married, she found out about meetings that she hadn’t been invited to. Then, when she came back from maternity leave, she found her number of clients dwindling. George had said it was because of Jen; Harriet was a mother now and she was needed at home. But Harriet hadn’t wanted to be at home, stuck with a bunch of nappies and awful women who thought that just because she had a baby, she wanted to spend her time talking to them about the joys of breast-feeding. She couldn’t bear being left on her own night after night while George went out entertaining clients, meeting his friends for drinks. She couldn’t take his looking through her, the suspicion that he was no longer truly in love with her.

And then Malcolm Bray moved onto the scene.

Harriet turned and stared out of the window. Malcolm had been the opposite of George. They might have gone to school together, but that was the only thing they had in common. Where George was brash and loud, Malcolm was quiet and thoughtful. Where George was impulsive and decisive, Malcolm was methodical and took his time. And where George spoke his mind, Malcolm was secretive—not that Harriet had realized at the time, of course. It had taken Malcolm two years to seduce her, two years to play on her emotions, convincing her that George was having an affair himself; that if he truly loved her, he wouldn’t leave her alone night after night.

Harriet shook her head at her stupidity. Two years to seduce her and two months to break her. Then he’d walked away, telling her he had no use for her anymore. He’d got what he wanted—he’d metaphorically screwed his old school friend, the one he’d been jealous of ever since George was made head boy and got into Cambridge in spite of breaking half the rules of the school and barely looking at his books, while Malcolm, the one who worked hard and did everything by the book, achieved neither.

“Harriet?” Malcolm said irritably. “Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?”

Jen and George walked silently down the stairs into the basement car park where his Jaguar was waiting for them.

They got in and George started the engine, negotiating his way around the car park and emerging into the bright sun of St. James.

“Paul Song,” Jen asked flatly. “Why was he calling you?”

George put on the radio.

“I said, why was Paul Song calling you?”

“He called me, did he? That’s interesting.”

Jen rolled her eyes in irritation. “You say you want me to trust you, but I don’t. And the reason I don’t is because you lie, you keep secrets, and you don’t even seem to be embarrassed about it.” She stared ahead as she spoke, feeling stronger without her father’s eyes boring into her.

“That’s the point of trust,” George said, his voice full of tension. “If I told you everything, you wouldn’t need to trust me, would you? Trust involves taking a risk, suspending disbelief. Wouldn’t you say?”

Jen turned to look at him. He was staring ahead, and a vein in his forehead was throbbing violently. “I don’t know why you’re coming,” she said after a short pause. “Unless, of course, you’re worried that Mum’s getting close to the truth.” She looked quickly at her father to check his reaction, but there was no sign of any emotion on his face.

“Right,” he said eventually. “Well, here we are.”

Jen nodded as they pulled up outside the building. “You can’t park here,” she pointed out. “You’ll get towed away.”

George looked at her. “Let’s consider it expensive valet parking, shall we?”

He turned off the engine, and they both got out, George pulling out his mobile phone as they did so.

“Paul,” Jen heard him say. “Yes, we’re outside Green Futures right now. About to go in. You’ll make the calls? Good, see you shortly.”

Jen opened her mouth to ask a question, then thought better of it. She had an uneasy feeling that she was going to get her answers soon enough.

Harriet was trying to stay detached, to act professionally. This was a business deal, she kept telling herself. It was the only way.

But even as the words ran through her head, she felt herself want to shout “No!” This wasn’t how things were meant to turn out. She’d never be able to live with herself if she went ahead and signed her soul over to the devil—or, rather, to Malcolm Bray. But what choice did she have? It was do or die, and Harriet wasn’t entirely sure which was preferable.

She looked at Malcolm and shivered slightly.

“You know what our brochure says?” she asked.

Malcolm shook his head.

“It says that Green Futures will only work with companies with the same goals and aims as ours. To build a better world. To work with stakeholders instead of against them. To be fair in our dealings, to be a positive force in the community . . .”

Malcolm nodded sagely. “And that’s why we’re so keen to work with you. To . . . support you.”

There was the hint of a smile on his face, and Harriet wanted to throw something at him.

“I thought that the subtext to your mission statement was ‘to get back at Bell Consulting’ anyway,” Malcolm continued. “Let’s just file this little contract under that heading, shall we?”

Harriet stared at him coldly. The worst thing was, he was right. She had wanted to get back at Bell, to get back at George. But now she wasn’t even sure about that anymore. She wasn’t sure about anything. And she was running out of time.

“Look, Harriet, let’s not worry too much about out-of-date strategies,” Malcolm said amiably. “Let’s just sign the contract. Axiom will pay off your debts, your firm will be saved, we’ll tell the world that we’ve realized what an error it was to work with an unethical and ruthless company like Bell Consulting, and we’ll have a nice press conference where you can tell all the papers about our rebuilding program.” He motioned at the pen Harriet was holding.

“And you really think they’ll believe you knew nothing about it?”

“They want someone to blame, and they’ll have Bell Consulting. That’ll keep the papers full for months.”

“But . . . ,” Harriet said, her hand trembling, “but what if
I
don’t believe you . . .”

Suddenly Malcolm’s jovial veneer evaporated. “Harriet, my dear, I would be very careful what you say from now on. This contract, this deal, is being offered on the basis that you fully accept our position. That Bell Consulting, without our knowledge, orchestrated a number of illegal and immoral deals last year on our behalf, but without our knowledge, following the tsunami tragedy. That they have subsequently been paying off officials in order to keep these deals a secret because they discovered that we weren’t interested in any work that wasn’t rightfully ours. That we are as angry and upset as everyone else, now that we know the truth. That we have turned to Green Futures because we cannot continue to work with an unscrupulous man like George Bell.”

“And the buildings that fell down? The regulations that weren’t followed?”

“A tragedy, for which people will lose their jobs. I think we can probably pin that on Bell, too, if we really put our minds to it.”

Harriet closed her eyes briefly. What they were doing would destroy George. But he deserved it, surely? She’d have liked George and Malcolm to go down together, but surely one was better than none? She was doing the right thing, she told herself. If only she could get rid of the feeling of nausea.

“But how do you know the truth now?”

Malcolm smiled. “We have a source in Indonesia who will testify to the fact that Bell Consulting has been bribing him. Don’t worry, Harriet, I’ve taken care of all the details.”

“And . . . what if I don’t sign? What if I don’t believe you had nothing to do with it?”

Malcolm looked at Harriet coldly. “You wouldn’t be so stupid,” he sneered. “You wouldn’t risk George Bell watching you go under, proving him right all along. And anyway, if you don’t sign, you could just find yourself implicated in this whole business.”

Harriet frowned. “Don’t talk rubbish, Malcolm.”

Malcolm smiled again. “You mean you don’t know, Harriet?”

She shook her head and narrowed her eyes.

“I thought you would have realized,” Malcolm said smoothly, “that one of your employees has been the conduit for the various bribes that have moved from the U.K. to Indonesia. Your friend Paul Song has, I believe, been very helpful to George, moving money around, introducing him to the right officials. Of course, now he’s happy to testify on our behalf, but if you prefer, I’m sure he could point the finger at you . . .”

“Paul . . . ?” Harriet gasped.

Malcolm laughed. “Yes, Harriet, Paul. And this from the woman who thinks she’s such a good judge of people!”

“You’re lying,” Harriet spat. “You are lying to me.”

Malcolm shook his head. “Nice chap, I thought. Met him in Indonesia more than a year ago. Very helpful and
very
well connected. It was my idea that he come to you, actually. I rather liked the irony of our contact working for Harriet Keller.”

He was chortling now, his face full of self-satisfaction, and Harriet was white.

“I don’t believe you.”

“You know, I don’t really care if you do or not. Let’s just get on with it, shall we?”

Harriet slumped back in her chair. Not Paul. Not her confidant. It was too much to take in at once. She had failed so spectacularly at running her business, and now it turned out that the only person she truly trusted was the person she should have despised.

If only she’d done things differently, she thought desperately. If only . . .

Slowly Harriet looked up and faced Malcolm. She was hemmed in; she was in checkmate. If she signed, she would save her firm, but she would lose everything else including the ability to sleep at night. If she didn’t sign, the firm would be dissolved, she’d have nothing left. . . .

She sighed and steeled herself. George was right, she told herself. Business was about making money. By ignoring that little fact, she’d ended up here, doing the very thing she had gone into business to avoid.

“Well, then,” she said eventually, her spirit broken. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

“Which floor?” George asked as a bemused receptionist watched him and Jen approach the lifts.

“You’ll need to sign him in,” she said to Jen, pointing at George. “You can’t just . . .”

But, too impatient to wait for the lifts, they had already opened the door to the stairwell and disappeared behind it.

“Right, so you need to sign here on the front page; initial the paragraph on page three, and then sign here, here, and here. Oh, and we’ll need a couple of witnesses.”

Malcolm got up. “Shall I get your secretary to be one?” he asked.

Harriet nodded.
This isn’t really happening,
she told herself.
It’s all just a terrible dream.

She took the pen that Malcolm was holding and started to write.

29

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Jen, positioned behind her father, saw Harriet’s face look up in shock as the door flew open and her ex-husband appeared in front of her. “What . . . what are you doing here, George?” she asked, her face going white. “Jen . . . what . . . I don’t understand.”

Jen opened her mouth to speak, but George got in there first.

“I was rather thinking of asking my friend Malcolm what
he
is doing here,” he said sternly, walking into the room.

Jen followed, and perched on a chair. The tension in the room was electric—Malcolm staring angrily at George, her mother looking as if she was about to throw up, and her father prowling around the room like a caged tiger about to pounce.

“Signing something, Harriet?” he asked, his eyes falling on what looked like a contract.

Malcolm carefully picked up some papers and edged them across the table so that they partly covered the pages in front of Harriet. “Nothing of any interest to you, George,” he said with a little smile. “Just a little bit of business. How are things, by the way? We must do lunch sometime . . .”

“Lunch. Yes, of course,” George said thoughtfully, then he shook his head.

Jen looked at him with disdain, and then at her mother. Whatever was going on here made her sick to her stomach. As far as she was concerned, they all deserved one another, and a lot more. Was all business conducted in this way, she wondered—dodgy deals behind closed doors, threats and promises issued like banknotes?

“You see, the trouble is, Malcolm,” George continued, “I’m not really the sort of person who can have lunch with a double-crossing bastard like you.”

Jen frowned, surprised, and Malcolm looked up quickly. “George,” he said in a warning voice. “Not here.”

“Oh, I think here is the perfect place and time, don’t you?” George said quickly as Jen and her mother watched in silence. “Let me guess what’s going on here. Harriet, you’re broke and Malcolm here is desperate. I smell a deal. . . .”

Jen stared at him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said irritably. “Mum would never do a deal with someone like Malcolm Bray. If anyone round here is doing a deal with him, it’s more likely to be you . . .”

She looked at Harriet for support, but noticed that her mother was staring firmly at the table in front of her. Then she noticed the pen in her hand.

“Mum?” Jen said quickly. “Mum, tell him it isn’t true . . .”

“I just wanted to save my firm,” Harriet said quietly. “Your father had dug his own grave, and I saw an opportunity . . .”

“You were going to do a deal with Malcolm Bray?” Jen asked incredulously.

“
Is
doing one,” Malcolm said immediately, standing up. “Look, George, I don’t know what kind of a circus you’re trying to create here, but it’s too late. I’ve already tipped off the authorities that you were orchestrating that terrible corruption scandal—and Harriet has agreed to take us on as a client now that Axiom obviously wishes to distance itself from Bell Consulting. If I were you, I’d be worrying about my own future, not interfering in our business.”

Jen stared at Malcolm, then at her father. “So it is true,” she gasped. “You were behind it. You . . . you bastard.”

George’s face remained stony. “Harriet, put down that pen.”

Harriet looked at him defiantly. “Don’t tell me what to do, George. Don’t ever tell me what to do.”

“Please, then. Please put down the pen. Don’t let yourself down, Harriet. Don’t let everything come to this.”

Harriet’s hand moved slightly toward the contract. “I don’t have any choice, George,” she whispered. “There’s nothing else for me to do.”

He frowned. “There’s always an alternative. We’ll bail you out if you need funds. Jesus, you don’t sell your soul to the devil the minute things get tough.”

“Maybe Dad could pay some bribes for you,” Jen said caustically. “Couldn’t you, Dad?”

George turned and stared at her. “You really hate me, don’t you?” he asked sadly.

“I don’t hate you, Dad, I despise you. For letting me believe you. For letting me think I had a father again. I trusted you.”

“And could you trust me again? If I asked you to? Now, I mean?”

Jen frowned. “Why should I?”

“Just because. Do you?”

Jen hesitated, taking in her mother’s hesitant hand, her father’s serious face. She had no idea what she thought of anything anymore. But deep down, she did want to believe that her father wasn’t involved, that there was some perfectly reasonable explanation. Even though she knew it was highly unlikely, her heart wanted to trust him.

“Fine,” she said quietly. “But if you let me down . . .”

George nodded. “Malcolm’s right, I was behind it all,” he said slowly as Jen watched him like a hawk. “Or, rather, I was behind the latest string of deals. I was rather baffled as to how Axiom kept winning contract after contract in Asia, when I knew just how shoddy their work was, and when I heard on the grapevine that there was money changing hands I was . . . well, I was intrigued.”

Malcolm was looking at George with suspicion, but it was Harriet who spoke.

“I knew it,” she said suddenly. “I knew it was you. And you knew Paul was involved all along and you let me work with him, let me trust him—”

“Paul?” Jen interrupted. “What’s Paul got to do with it?”

“Ask your father,” Harriet glowered. “He’s the one who enjoys playing with people.”

Jen looked at her father expectantly, and George smiled broadly.

“You’re right again,” he said. “I do like playing with people. And as for Paul, well, he’s very good at what he does. Abysmal feng shui expert, but I suppose you can’t have everything.”

“How dare you!” Harriet shouted. “You’ve ruined my life once, and now you’re trying to do it again.”

George raised his eyebrows. “If I know Malcolm,” he said archly, “and I think I do, I expect you were just about to attempt to ruin my life, so I suspect we’re even. Anyway, I have never ruined your life. I made one mistake I accept, and that was to trust Malcolm. I thought that you should take the word of your old school friends, and that’s what I did. But I regret it. Believe me, I regret it.”

Jen frowned. “What are you talking about?” she demanded. “When did you take his word?”

“When he told me that his company was all above-board, many years ago. Your mother was trying to convince me to sever all ties with him, and I refused. Took his word over hers, which was, I can see now, a big mistake. A mistake for which we’re all paying now, in many ways.”

Jen frowned. “What do you mean?”

“He means that I divorced him over it. That and . . . other things,” Harriet said, darkly.

Malcolm raised his eyebrows. “I’m glad I’ve made such a difference to your lives,” he said sharply. “Now, Harriet, perhaps you could ask your family to leave and we can get on with our meeting?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jen said firmly. “I want to know what’s going on here.”

George chuckled and looked at his watch. “Let me tell you,” he said calmly. “What’s going on here is that Malcolm Bray is about to get what’s coming to him.”

Malcolm frowned. “George, just bugger off, will you?” he said angrily.

“Oh, I intend to,” George said affably. “But not before the police arrive.”

Malcolm and Harriet looked up sharply.

“I don’t want the police here,” Harriet said quickly. “Paul isn’t even here. He’s—”

“Going to be here in about five minutes,” George interrupted. “As are the police. I’m sorry, Malcolm, but it’s not looking too good for you, old chum.”

Malcolm shook his head. “George, I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, but getting the police here is just going to speed your journey to prison. You organized the bribes; you transferred the money. Bell Consulting will never survive this. . . .”

“Ah, now that’s where you’re wrong,” George said. “You see, when you thought that I was bribing government officials for you, via our friend Paul, I was actually paying compensation to the poor buggers whose houses you built—if
built
is the right word for those pathetic imitations of houses your company put up.”

Malcolm stared at him. “If this is some ridiculous ruse to cover your tracks, George, it won’t work. . . .”

“No ruse,” George said, then paused. “Actually, that’s a lie. There was a ruse. It’s just that it was aimed at you, not me. You see, our friend Paul may be a rather poor feng shui consultant, but he is a first-class undercover detective. One of Indonesia’s finest.”

He turned to Jen. “You can imagine that the Indonesian government were very keen to get to the bottom of any suspected corruption, can’t you?”

She nodded silently.

“Well, Paul has been following your every move over the past few months, Malcolm. Every bribe, every lie. Sadly we haven’t been able to trace any of the bribes you paid to get the tsunami construction work in the first place, but Paul and I have a rather good body of evidence for your subsequent attempts to bribe the officials who were investigating you. And the threats, of course. Nothing like the carrot and the stick to get results, eh, Malcolm?”

Malcolm regarded George stonily.

“I only realized today that it was you that leaked that letter to the
Times
over Christmas, though. That was stupid of me. But as soon as I did, I imagined you might pull something like this.”

Jen watched as Malcolm’s eyes narrowed, and her father winked at her.

“Face it, Malcolm, the game’s over. You robbed me of my wife and you’ve tried to rob me of my firm, and now I like to think that I’ve partially got my own back.”

Jen was looking at her father in shock. “You . . . you . . .” she stammered, unable to string a complete sentence together.

“I’m not going to sit here, listening to this,” Malcolm said quickly, gathering his papers together and making for the door. “I’ve had enough of the two of you to last me a lifetime. Harriet, the deal’s off. And George . . .”

But before he could finish his sentence, Paul Song appeared at the door, flanked by two uniformed policemen. He smiled politely at Jen, bowed to Harriet, and pointed out Malcolm, who was swiftly handcuffed.

“You’re a bastard, George,” Malcolm said bitterly as he was led away. “I’ve always despised you, you know.”

“So it appears,” George said in even tones. “And you, Malcolm, deserve everything that’s coming to you.”

“So you slept with Malcolm? Eeuurgh.”

They were sitting in a pub round the corner from Bell Consulting, and Jen was staring at her mother incredulously, cradling a gin and tonic in her hands, while George was up at the bar buying a second round of drinks. Jen was still getting over the shock from the revelation that her father was the good guy after all, and Harriet was still having problems coming to terms with the fact that her feng shui adviser and confidant was actually an ex-militia policeman who’d bought her crystals from Wool-worth’s. All in all, Jen felt that they were handling it pretty well.

“It was a long time ago,” Harriet said dismissively. “A lifetime ago.”

“But Malcolm Bray?”

Harriet shot her daughter a warning look. “Enough, thank you.”

“Sorry I took a bit long—bumped into a client at the bar,” George said, appearing with a tray of drinks. “Enough of what?”

Harriet looked at him guiltily. “Nothing, George,” she said quickly. “Nothing at all.”

“I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Jen said, looking at her father accusingly. “All that time you let me think you were involved. Why didn’t you trust me?”

“You didn’t trust me,” he said with a little smile. “And I didn’t want you involved. Anyway, haven’t you heard of the phrase ‘a means to an end’?”

“Oh great, so I was the means?”

George shook his head. “Of course not. In spite of your mother’s best attempts,” he said, smiling.

“I still don’t fully understand,” said Harriet, shaking her head, trying to make sense of the situation.

“It’s simple really,” George said dismissively. “When Axiom got the deals in Indonesia, we were shocked, frankly. I saw the tender documents and they were un-competitive and patchy at best. But I didn’t think too much of it, until rumors started circulating about bribes and underhanded dealings. I dislike underhanded dealings, particularly when they’re too close for comfort to my firm, so I did a little bit of digging. That’s when I came across Paul, who was doing a bit of digging of his own. We hatched our little plan—I offered to help Malcolm out of a difficult situation by introducing him to Paul, who pretended to be a corrupt government investigator. Malcolm insisted on arm’s-length deals—he’s a clever man, I’ll give him that—so I was supposed to pay Paul through our Indonesian office.”

“But you didn’t,” Harriet said. “Yes, I kind of got that. But why did it take you so long to pin it on him? And why did the newspapers keep saying there were no leads?”

George shrugged. “My fault, I’m afraid. I didn’t want Malcolm to suspect anything. We needed solid evidence of the initial bribes, so I sent a consultant out to Indonesia to see what he could find. Of course it was too late. And then we realized what Malcolm was doing—his plans to make it look like we were the ones behind it all along. Bloody man. If only I hadn’t been in hospital over Christmas, I’d have worked it out sooner.”

Jen reddened slightly as she remembered her attempts to keep him away from the news and away from work. “Still,” she said quickly, “you’ve got him now.”

Harriet bristled. “I hope Paul’s got enough evidence to put him away for a long time,” she said passionately.

George nodded sagely. “And to ruin his firm and put shockwaves through the industry.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Jen watching how, together, her parents seemed different somehow. Her mother seemed more open—softer, but in a good way. A way that admitted she had vulnerabilities. And her father—well, she’d never seen him so cheerful. Although she suspected that had more to do with Malcolm Bray than either of them.

After a while, George turned to Jen. “So, how’s the MBA going?”

She looked at him in disbelief. They’d been through all this, and he still wanted to know that she was working?