The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman (64 page)

I started to worry that Lai had been all talk, I couldn’t for the life of me see how he could be behind all these deals or how it would help us to get back at Kaufman when all that seemed to be happening was that he was going from strength to strength. Jenny told me not to worry, to trust Lai. The holiday problem had been solved, temporarily at least, because her company had agreed on a temporary attachment to their London office. I suppose they didn’t want to lose her, better to have her working for them in London than not at all. I still couldn’t get over how easily, how casually, she’d slid into my life and become a part of it. Losing her now would be like losing an arm or a leg.

It was early September and I’d been on the wagon for six weeks when the shit hit the fan. Without warning and with the bare minimum of explanation the partners in all of Kaufman’s Chinese ventures began to pull out, one by one. The Chinese Government said they were cutting back on their spending on infrastructure, the highway and the power plant were being put on ice, and the newspaper project was scrapped despite Kaufman having committed several million dollars to the deal. The hotels were declared surplus to requirements as was the container terminal. Roland Harper, the paper’s dapper diplomatic correspondent, came in one afternoon bursting with the news that the Chinese were now making it unofficially known that Kaufman was about as welcome in China as an AIDS carrier with a nosebleed.

‘See,’ said Jenny. ‘I said you could trust him.’

The bottom fell out of Kaufman Industries shares, and when the China-backed bank announced it was selling its nine per cent holding to a Hong Kong company for substantially less than they’d paid for it the news made the front of the
Financial Times
and, on the back page, one of the writers of the Lex column wrote an authoritative and totally wrong analysis of what was behind the change of heart and what it meant to the company. All the crap about gearing, price-earning ratios and Chinese hesitancy to open up fully to Western capitalism just didn’t apply. The company that now held a major stake in Kaufman Industries was Dennis Lai’s. He had Kaufman by the balls and he was starting to squeeze. The share price hit rock bottom the day before Lai bought into Kaufman Industries and then it started to climb again, slowly but steadily, putting on a couple of points each day. According to the City reporter who threw the stock market report together, buying orders were coming in from around the world: Toronto, Sydney, San Francisco, and London. Nothing big, nothing that passed the five per cent mark at which point the buyer would have to reveal himself, just steady acquisition of the group’s shares by a number of mystery buyers.

The call came two months to the day after I’d left Hong Kong, two months during which I hadn’t touched a drop while I’d hungered for revenge and wondered time and time again what the hell Lai was up to and if he’d be able to pull it off, whatever it was. It was the white phone on Roger’s desk that rang, but he made no move to answer it. He was up to his eyes in an expense sheet, his most creative work of the week. The paper was making it harder though, there’d been a clampdown on all expenses, and they’d got shot of a number of casuals.

‘Nothing I can do, lads,’ Bill Hardwicke had told us. ‘Pressure’s coming right from the top this time, it’s not just a question of lying low until it blows over. This is serious – Kaufman’s in trouble and every part of his empire is coming in for some pretty drastic belt-tightening. We’re just going to have to grin and bear it.’

In the good old days of Fleet Street it would have been a union matter and the NUJ heavies would have gone in and a couple of days of working to rule would have sorted the matter out, either that or they’d have lost a few million copies. But new technology, the new generation of newspaper barons and the high wages had taken the fight out of the unions so we just sat at our terminals and tried to be more creative, substituting taxi fares for hospital bills and signing each other’s restaurant receipts.

The line from Hong Kong was clear as a bell, only the slight satellite delay giving any indication of the thousands of miles between us. His voice was flat and emotionless and he didn’t bother with small talk as if he was worried about the cost of the call.

‘I will be meeting him in the Grill Room of the Mandarin Hotel in three days’ time. Can you make it?’

‘Try and stop me,’ I replied.

‘Thursday, one o’clock,’ he said. ‘It might be better if you arrived slightly later, it might scare him off if he sees both of us waiting for him.’

‘I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘God, I thought you’d never ring.’

‘You should have had more faith in me. And you should have realized that this is not something that can be rushed. I will see you on Thursday.’ He cut the line and I held the phone to my ear for several seconds as waves of relief, pleasure and excitement washed over me, an adrenaline kick that tightened my stomach and set the hairs on the back of my neck standing as straight as soldiers on a parade ground.

‘What’s up?’ asked Roger.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just a friend.’

‘You’re grinning like a Cheshire cat. Rich relative just died?’

I smiled at him and imagined pushing a lighted cigarette into his left eye. It made me feel better.

‘Here, sign this for me,’ and he threw over a blank receipt from one of the more upmarket wine bars on the Isle of Dogs. ‘That Kaufman is a bastard.’

‘Yeah, isn’t he just.’ I scrawled a spidery signature on the yellow slip and scribbled in a few numbers.

‘Fifty-six OK?’ I said.

‘That’ll do nicely,’ he said, and I handed it back. I hoped he didn’t look too closely at the signature because his sense of humour had nose-dived since they’d taken his car back. Seeing ‘M. Mouse’ might just drive him over the edge. I thought of pushing a broken bottle into his throat and I positively beamed at him.

‘I have to go to Hong Kong again.’

‘Not on our budget.’

‘I’ll take some days off. I’m owed enough.’

‘You’ll have to check with Hardwicke.’

‘Will do.’

Bill just nodded and said sure, take as long as you want. He seemed to be frowning all the time now, and he looked older. The paper was in profit, with new technology you had to try really hard to lose money in publishing, but the parent company had pulled out most of its cash and saddled it with a hefty debt. He was having to make do with fewer reporters, a reduced wire service, and his travel budget had been cut to the bone.

‘Problems with the Hong Kong cops?’ he asked. His hair seemed greyer, too, what little he had left.

‘No, just a few loose ends to tie up.’

‘OK. Get back as soon as you can. You know how short-staffed we are.’

‘All hands to the pumps.’

‘With the rats queuing up to jump ship.’ Two of the paper’s feature writers had already handed in their notice and it was an open secret that another half dozen reporters were looking for other jobs. ‘I hear Roger is after a move.’

‘He’s been whispering into the phone a few times,’ I admitted. What the hell, I didn’t owe Roger any favours.

‘It’s to be expected,’ he said, stacking together the heap of page plans that forever seemed to be strewn across his desk. ‘This isn’t a particularly happy place at the moment.’

‘It’ll pass, Bill,’ I said. ‘Swings and roundabouts.’ He looked smaller, too. In all the years I’d known him I’d never seen him look so defeated, so hurt. The word around the office was that his son was dying of cancer, but he’d never mentioned it and it wasn’t the sort of thing you could bring up in normal conversation. Professionally we shared everything but on a personal level he was a virtual stranger. Hell, I didn’t even know his wife’s name.

‘Are you OK, Bill?’ I asked.

He nodded and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I’ve got a lot on my plate, at the moment,’ he said, and shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘That’s all.’

‘If I can help . . .’ I didn’t finish the sentence because what the hell could I do? I left him with his page plans and whatever was troubling him.

Roger was still filling in his expense sheet when I got back to his desk.

‘Bill says it’s OK,’ I told him.

‘So it’s OK.’ He didn’t look up. I took an axe and hacked off his head and watched it roll across the floor. ‘When are you going?’ he asked.

‘I’ll fix up a flight tomorrow.’

‘Any idea how long you’ll be away this time?’ The arrogant runt still didn’t bother to look up.

‘As long as it takes,’ I said in a quiet voice, wanting to rile him, to pick an argument so that I could unleash the bitterness and resentment.

‘Don’t be away too long.’

‘Afraid I’ll miss your leaving do?’

That made him look up sharply and I was pleased that at last I’d touched a nerve. I logged off and waved goodbye to Katy.

‘Do you want me to speak to Robbie?’ she said.

‘No thanks, love. This one’s on me.’

I booked into the Excelsior and they made the same spelling mistake on the matches but what the hell, I don’t smoke anyway. The mini-bar was well stocked and my fingers played over the gin bottle before I took out a can of Sprite, more to kill time than to quench my thirst. It was Thursday, half past twelve, and the Mandarin was just ten minutes away in a cab. I paced the room, drinking from the can, my heart thumping in my chest. I had a headache, a dull pain that filled my skull and I’d drawn the curtains to keep out the blinding midday sun. All night I’d tossed and turned but at least I hadn’t had any ‘I’m back’ dreams. When I thought of Sally now it wasn’t with a gut-wrenching feeling of loss but with a gentle sadness. I missed her. I missed Jenny, too. She was staying in London, thinking of moving there permanently. She’d wanted to come with me to Hong Kong but I told her I wanted to see this through on my own. She understood. Now I wished she had come.

It was exactly five past one when I walked into the cool grandeur of the Mandarin Grill and asked the maitre d’ to take me to Dennis Lai’s table. It was in the far corner and he led me past a long table that groaned under an elaborate display of seafood. A crowd of green crabs with their claws tied with string scuffled on a pile of ice chippings, and a couple of large lobsters slowly waved their antennae, sensing movement. Kaufman had his back to the entrance so he didn’t see me until I was standing next to the table and a funereal waiter pulled a chair out for me.

The restaurant was a masterpiece of plush opulence, subdued lighting and subdued conversation. The tables were far enough apart so that diners couldn’t eavesdrop and there were so many waiters about that no matter when you reached for a cigarette a light would be held in front of you before you could get it out of the packet.

Kaufman’s eyes didn’t register recognition when Lai introduced us, and my name didn’t seem to mean anything to him. He might have been playing cool because I was pretty sure he would have pulled my file from personnel at some point during the last few months. And he must have known who I was because he’d put pressure on me through Bill Hardwicke to get me back to London. I’d had a couple of sleepless nights once I’d gone back, thinking that perhaps Kaufman would set out to get me, but after the attack outside my home I’d been left alone and after a while I’d got out of the habit of looking over my shoulder when I unlocked my front door. I guess he thought that without evidence there was no way I could hurt him. He was wearing an immaculately tailored, grey pinstripe suit, a spotless white shirt and an MCC tie. His steel grey hair looked as if it had been welded to his head and shaped with metal cutters and a blow torch. He looked cool and unflustered which I guess was to be expected because he’d booked a suite in the Mandarin and had only had to take the lift down to the restaurant. I was wearing my number three blue Marks and Spencer suit with the cigarette burn by the middle button and I was sweating. Wiping my hands on the crisp white serviette that was every bit as dazzling as Kaufman’s shirt didn’t seem to help. Lai asked me what I wanted to drink and the little demon in me that craved alcohol asked for a gin and tonic but I pushed him back into his cell and ordered a ginger ale. The first couple of days on the wagon I’d tried drinking neat tonic water but it brought back too many memories of its constant companion so I’d packed it in.

‘Cheers,’ I said, raising my glass to Lai, who nodded without smiling. He made no move to explain my presence to Kaufman, who spent a few minutes fishing for a hint from me before giving up and consoling himself with polite social chit-chat about the hotel, the weather, British politics and 1997. We’d just started on the way AIDS was spreading through Asia when a waiter appeared with voluminous leather-bound menus. He was followed by a wine waiter in a gold waistcoat with what looked like a silver ashtray hanging from a chain around his neck, so we got on with the serious business of choosing the food and wine.

Lai and Kaufman seemed to treat it seriously, anyway, scoring culinary points off each other at every opportunity as they discussed methods of preparation and presentation. Kaufman chose oysters and a mixed grill while Lai asked for smoked salmon and beef from the trolley. I wanted soup but the way my hands were starting to tremble, I knew I had little chance of getting any from the bowl to my mouth with a spoon and asking for a straw was out of the question. Without thinking I asked for the same as Lai and Kaufman raised his metal filing eyebrows but what the hell, there was no doubt whose side I was on. The choice of wine turned into a battle of wills with Lai eventually conceding and agreeing to try the Nuits-St-Georges, letting Kaufman have his way with a curt smile.

The conversation moved towards China and by the time the main course arrived the two businessmen were discussing the problems of doing business with the mainland.

‘You seem to have been having more than your fair share of problems there,’ said Lai, cutting a piece of beef with the careful precision of a Harley Street surgeon opening up a peer of the realm, and spreading it thickly with mustard. English mustard at that, he must have had an asbestos mouth.