The Money Makers (14 page)

At two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, Kiki remembered she was meant to be at a cocktail party in New York that evening and she shot off to the airport to jump on the next Concorde. George saw her off. At the fast-track customs channel, they stopped. They couldn’t delay a goodbye any further. Kiki turned to her companion, her face showing the signs of passionate struggle.

‘Goodbye, Georges.’

‘Kiki.’

George wanted to kiss again properly, as they had done before. He couldn’t believe that she didn’t want to too, but she shook her head and her troubled eyes were begging him ‘No’. She reached up to kiss him high up on the cheek and hugged him as she hugged practically everyone she knew.

‘Good luck with your horrid factory.’

‘Bye. Don’t ... don’t lose touch.’

She left him there, watching till she passed out of sight. George ached with longing. He wondered if he would ever see her again. He also wondered where he was going to spend the night.

13

Zack was depressed. He was working hard on stuff so boring it hurt. The Aberdeen Drilling deal, as expected, had run into the sand. Tominto Oil had put in a bid of £115 million and been politely told that its bid was too low but thanks so much for trying. It was goodbye and good riddance. The winning bidder hadn’t yet closed the deal, but it hardly mattered. Whoever won, it wasn’t Tominto. Zack’s first deal was a washout. In climbing the ladder to a million quid he still hadn’t put his foot on the first rung.

What was worse, he was beginning to realise something about his chosen profession. To make money in corporate finance you don’t just have to be good, you have to be old. Chief executives making life and death decisions don’t simply want wise heads, they want old ones. Forced to choose between the two, they’d pick the old one every time. It’s not like that on the trading floor. In the markets, you can be old and grey, but if you bet wrong and the office boy bets right, then, before you know it, you’ll be sweeping the floors and the office boy will be on the phone to the Long Island estate agents. Zack could be the most brilliant mind in the City of London, but without long years of experience he’d never make bonuses big enough to release his father’s fortune. If he weren’t careful, Zack wouldn’t just be beaten by Matthew. He’d be humiliated.

And there was one final irritation. Every day he had to see Sarah, work with her, be professional, keep his hands off, not make love. He was as hopelessly in lust as he’d always been and he was being forced to sit and watch politely as she and her millions got married to some aristocratic lumphead. Zack was depressed.

It was eight o’clock in the evening and he was finishing up for the night. On his way out he walked by Sarah’s desk. She was still there working, bent over a presentation, hair tucked behind her ears.

‘Hi, Sarah.’

‘Zack. Hi. On your way out?’

‘Yes. I wondered if you’d like to come out for a beer?’

This was the first time either of them had suggested moving beyond careful professionalism into something like friendship. Sarah hesitated.

‘Urn. I’d like to, but I’ve some stuff to finish up. Robert’s coming to pick me up in forty-five minutes.’

Robert Leighton, the fiancé. The obstacle. Zack sighed.

‘OK. Some other time? Tomorrow? It’s stupid you and me working together so closely and pretending we hardly know each other.’

‘Yes, but let’s be realistic. You would never have chosen me as your colleague and I wouldn’t have chosen you. But that’s how it is and so far it’s worked. Why mess things up?’

Zack spread his hands. He didn’t tell her, ‘Because I’m filled with lust and I want your money.’ Instead he said, ‘A drink can’t hurt. It’s been years now. I’ve changed. I know I was difficult then, but it doesn’t have to be that way now.’

‘Not difficult, Zack. You were impossible.’

She was pushing him. In the old days, he would never have let himself be pushed. They were already on the brink of an argument. Zack defused things carefully.

‘OK. I was impossible. I apologise. I was impossible and you were stubborn.’

His tum to challenge her. Would she acknowledge any fault? She nodded.

‘Yes. I was stubborn. I still am. I haven’t changed. I still like all the things I used to like. Hunting, balls, everything you loathe.’

‘That’s OK. You can murder every furry thing in England for all I care. It doesn’t bother me now. It’s Robert you have to share a life with. I’m just inviting you to share a drink.’

Sarah took a deep breath and looked at Zack. It felt like the first time they’d properly looked at each other in all this time. They hadn’t changed much. He was tall, angular, dark, intense. She was fair, square-chinned, athletic, honest-looking. Physically, everything had always worked between them, the only thing that ever had.

‘OK. A drink sometime. That’d be nice.’

‘Good. Great. I’ll hold you to that.’

They nodded at each other, Zack’s cue to leave. But he couldn’t tear himself away. His body fizzed with desire. Sarah had pulled her hair from behind her left ear and was fiddling absent-mindedly with the short brown strands. Zack watched. He knew Sarah. Playing with her hair meant she was thinking about sex.

‘Working on anything interesting?’ he asked, not because he wanted to know but because he wanted to stay.

Sarah laughed. ‘Not unless you count tax loopholes as interesting. It’s the sort of thing you’d probably be good at.’

‘I’m interested already.’

‘Well then, you’d better take a copy of this presentation and read as much as you want to. It’s as boring as hell to me.’

Zack took the presentation that Sarah gave him and riffled through it. He felt a sense of gathering excitement.

‘What’s the idea?’

‘It’s all in there,’ said Sarah, but Zack wasn’t leaving. She pushed her chair back and began to explain. ‘In every tax law, there’s a loophole. The point of this game is to find ways of passing as much money through the loopholes as fast as you can, until the tax authorities catch you at it and stop you doing it.’

‘And if they catch you?’

‘Well, you’re not doing anything illegal. In fact, you’re following the law to the letter, you’re just doing something completely different to what was originally intended. So when the taxmen discover their tax revenues are vanishing out of sight, they get a new law passed to block up the loophole. Then our tax experts put their twisted minds to work thinking up new ways to subvert the law. That’s why you’d be good at it. You’ve got the most twisted mind of anyone I know.’

‘And I can take a copy?’ asked Zack, waving the presentation.

‘Yes,’ replied Sarah laughing. ‘I’ve already said so. Just bring it back.’

Zack impulsively moved forward. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to kiss Sarah on the cheek or on the mouth, but anyhow she moved in surprise and he ended up kissing her half on the mouth, half on her upper lip. It was awkward and stupid. He apologised for his clumsiness and rushed off to copy the presentation, excited as a six-year-old.

Corporate financiers need to be old and wise and grey. Tax dodgers don’t. They just need to be right.

14

The factory shop had been cleared out. The museum exhibits which old Tom Gissing had lovingly pieced together lay shoved to one side, roughly covered by a dustsheet. George watched silently as the last of the workers filed in. There were no seats and the workforce, mostly men, stood, arms folded and muttering. Gissings wasn’t just the biggest employer in Sawley Bridge, it was pretty much the only one. George didn’t just own a factory. He controlled a community.

There was no platform, so George had had a Gissings desk pushed up against the wall. He sat on it and looked out at the sea of faces. Next to him stood Val Bartlett, old Tom Gissing’s secretary, with a sheaf of papers they had spent six long weeks putting together. Her mouth was taut and thin-lipped, turned down at the comers. The muttering from the assembled workers had an aggressive edge. George felt nervous.

When everybody was present, the murmur died away.

All eyes were on George, who clambered heavily on to the desk. At least the old-style Gissings quality should bear his weight. He had some notes in his pocket, but he didn’t take them out. He knew what he wanted to say.

‘Thank you all for coming. My name is George Gradley and I am the new owner of this company. What I want to do is to tell you how things stand and what needs to change.

‘First, the good news. In the last twelve months, this company has sold one and a half million quids’ worth of furniture. That means there are still plenty of people who like what we do enough to fork out for it.

‘Now the bad news. We sold less last year than we did the year before, and less that year than the one before that. In fact, sales have fallen every year for five years.

‘I wouldn’t mind too much if our costs had come down. But they haven’t. They’ve gone up or stayed the same. As you all know, our costs are higher than our revenues. Much higher in fact. About two hundred thousand a year, and that’s before interest.

‘There might be some consolation if Gissings had been building for the future. But it hasn’t. It’s been building for the past. The factory extension is half-finished, but there’s no cash to finish it. Meanwhile our product line hasn’t changed in three years and it’s a decade out of date. Our marketing brochures are terrible and our prices are uncompetitive. Our most loyal customers are starting to look elsewhere, and I don’t blame them.

‘All this would be bad, but not disastrous if we had time to put things right. But we don’t. We owe the bank more than half a million pounds and we’ve got just under two months before the money’s due. We don’t have a chance of getting that much cash together in that space of time. But we do have a chance - a tiny one - of doing enough to persuade the bank that it should give us more time.

‘I know none of you knows me. Probably nobody in this room likes me or wants me here. But I want you to know that I’m speaking the truth. You all know Val, my secretary. I’ve asked her to show those of you who are interested all the facts and figures. You can see anything you want to. Our sales, our costs, our debts, everything. She understands all of this as well as anyone. Better than me, in fact. So talk to her. This is your company. You have a right to understand what’s going on.

‘Any questions so far?’

George looked around. Nobody moved. It had been obvious to everybody that Gissings was in trouble, but nobody had ever told them how bad. George could tell that the workforce believed him. But trust was a different matter and the toughest part of the speech was still to come. He felt nervous but committed.

‘So what are we going to do about it? Well, in the long term, if we get there, we’re going to turn Gissings into a thriving, expanding company, with a healthy balance sheet, a bloody good product line and a fat order book But right now, our aim is to survive and we can’t do that with our costs the way they are. As of today, I am suspending thirty-five of you. Val will read out the names in a moment. I say suspending because I hope to take you back on as soon as I can. But that won’t be much comfort to you because your pay cheques are stopping as of now and in all probability we’ll go bust within a matter of months anyway. I owe you some redundancy money. Some of you, who have been with us longest, are owed quite a lot. Well, you’re not going to get it, because we don’t have it. You can take us to court if you want, and you’ll win. But you won’t get your money because by the time you get your award, this company will have been picked bare. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.’

Val stood beside him with the thirty-five names.

Everybody in the sawmill would go. There was no point in a sawmill, when you could get better quality product delivered more cheaply. On the factory floor, everyone who had looked up and dawdled on George’s first tour of inspection was going. Those who had stayed working were the lucky ones.

‘As for the rest of you, I’m cutting your pay by fifteen percent. If any of you want to give up more than that for the good of the company, then I’ll write your name in gold on the factory gates just as soon as we can afford the paint. I’m not allowed to cut your pay like that. Once again, you can take me to court, and you’ll win. But you won’t get any cash back and you won’t have a job, because the company will be as dead as a doornail. For what it’s worth, I don’t intend to take one penny in pay, until this company has made enough money to cover its costs including interest. And I’m going to work my tits off to see that it does.

‘Are there any questions?’

There was silence from the assembled company. Weak sunshine threaded its way through the dirty plate­ glass windows. The yard beyond looked grey and empty. Standing on his desk, George felt exposed and vulnerable, but also renewed. He had said what needed saying, done what needed doing. He stayed standing. ‘Any questions at all?’

The silence lasted half a minute or so. Then somebody at the back of the room cleared his throat.

‘Why the fuck don’t you just write a cheque to the fucking bank for the fucking money and leave us poor bastards alone?’

15

‘Now try without the rails. Use your stick if you need to.’