Deadly Business (13 page)

‘Phil introduced us,’ she explained. ‘I was over in Glasgow for a board meeting. Before it started he took me into his office and Duncan was there. Phil told me who he was, and what, and asked if I was all right with him doing some freelance stuff for the company, things like a newsletter and maybe even the text for our glossy annual report. I said it was, and gave him my phone numbers if he needed to talk to me about anything. He called me next day and asked if he could buy me lunch at Rogano, to talk over some ideas. One of them was for a newsletter feature about my modest home life, in my Scottish house, to distract attention from where the kids and I really live. I liked that and I went for it. Then I found that I liked him too, and me being without a man at the time, one thing led to … well, you know where it led to. That’s how it kicked off. I was really gutted when he left, you know. How do I put it, Primavera? He’s the devil I know, I suppose. Don’t worry about me, please; he’ll look after me.’

I sighed. ‘Can I be brutal, Susie?’ I asked.

‘Go on then,’ she chuckled, ‘stick the boot in.’

‘It’s not you I’m worried about,’ I confessed. ‘Well, I am, but not as far as he’s concerned. It’s your kids.’

‘Then don’t. I’ve made it clear to him that we are not into physical punishment.’

‘I don’t mean that. Look, from what you’ve told me about the wedding, clearly you haven’t done any sort of pre-nupital agreement.’

‘No,’ she agreed, warily, ‘but I don’t plan to divorce him.’

‘That wasn’t what I was thinking about.’

‘Then …’ she read my meaning ‘Oh, I see. You mean when I pop off?’

‘Yes, exactly. If that happens, God forbid, he would be their stepfather.’

‘But you’d still be around to have an influence,’ she said.

‘Only at his discretion, and how do you think that would play out?’ I didn’t give her time to come up with an answer. ‘Not just that, though. Where is your will lodged? Scotland or Monaco?’

‘Scotland.’

‘Then surely, he’d be entitled to a share of your estate, even if you don’t mention him in it. You’re still the majority shareholder in the company. I don’t know if he would be, but what if he was legally entitled to some of those shares as a surviving spouse? If he was, it wouldn’t affect Tom, but what about Janet and wee Jonathan’s interests?’

‘But my will puts all my shareholding in trust for them,’ she countered. ‘Only …’ she hesitated, ‘… you’re wrong about Tom. He does have an interest. He’s Oz’s kid, so my view always was that he should benefit as the others do; after all, Oz’s personal shareholding was divided among the three of them. So you see, they’re all in the trust.’

‘And who’s the named trustee?’

‘Oz. I’ve never changed it since he died.’

‘Then the court would probably replace him with his successor, wouldn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose.’

‘Susie, can I ask you something else. Do you love this guy? It’s just that I’ve never heard you use the word.’

‘Love him?’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t be daft. You know who I …’ Her voice tailed off. ‘I’ve walked blindfold into something here, haven’t I?’

‘I don’t think you’ve walked anywhere, Susie. I think you’ve been led.’ Too frank, perhaps, Primavera. ‘But,’ I said, trying to retreat a little, ‘maybe I’m wrong about the man.’

‘Maybe you are, I hope you are. But you may have a point, and I’m not chancing my children’s future to the fucked-up state my head is in at the moment. What should I do?’

‘Change your will to appoint independent trustees to look after their interests, that’s what I would do first.’

‘How about you being one?’ she asked.

‘Only if you can’t shift Duncan legally from the trustee list. I’m not independent, honey, remember.’ Something obvious occurred to me, very late. ‘Where is he, right now? He can’t hear you, can he?’

‘No. He and Audrey have gone to make arrangements for the flight back. He wouldn’t give her his passport, so they both went.’

Why the hell not?
I wondered. ‘When are you coming home?’ I asked.

‘Tomorrow,’ she replied, ‘if everything’s confirmed. We should get to Monaco on Monday morning. Audrey’s going to ask Conrad to bring Janet and wee Jonathan home then.’

‘How about holding off for a day or so?’ I suggested.

‘I want to see them,’ she moaned.

‘Then rest up for a bit before you do. Be at your best for them.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ she agreed. ‘I should speak to Janet. Is she there?’ I filled her in on their day, and on where they were at that moment. ‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘All kids together. When I do get to talk to her, after that she isn’t going to be a wee girl any more, not ever.’

‘She hasn’t been for the last few months, Susie. You haven’t been ready to see it, that’s all.’

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Primavera,’ she continued, after a while, ‘about Duncan. You understand, don’t you? I needed somebody and he was the only one around.’

‘Sure, I understand.’

‘Then watch out for me, love; watch my back. I realise now I’m way exposed. I need to get in touch with my lawyer quietly when I’m back, but meantime is there one you could talk to for me? Just to get some thoughts on the will and everything?’

I thought about that. ‘There is one,’ I told her. ‘Although it would only be as a first step. Leave it with me.’

‘Okay,’ Susie said. ‘But only for the kids’ sake, Primavera, only for them. I’ve made my bed with Duncan, and I’ll lie in it.’ She giggled, an old-style Susie giggle that perked me up a little. ‘Mind you,’ she added, ‘that’s all I’ll be doing there, for a while at least.’

‘Good. Rest is what you need.’

I was far more shaken when we ended that conversation than I had been on the beach the night before. I should have known that Susie was likely to have researched her own condition. I tried to imagine what it had been like inside her head since her cross-examination of her doctor, but I couldn’t. We all know that we’re going to die, but the ‘when’ being added makes all the difference.

I thought for a while before making my next call, but I’d told Susie I would, so I didn’t have a choice. My only qualm about calling Harvey January was that he’s a judge and so might have felt himself unable to give any sort of legal advice, but that was overridden pretty quickly by the fact that he’s the kids’ uncle by virtue of his marriage to Oz’s sister. He’s also a pretty nice guy.

I didn’t want to involve Ellie if I could avoid it, given the way she feels about Susie, so I called him on his mobile, hoping that they weren’t side by side on the family sofa watching
Lawyers in Love
, or some other telly soap. I struck it lucky; he and his father-in-law were having lunch in the Golf Tavern in Elie, after Harvey’s latest eighteen-hole arse-kicking by Mac the Dentist.

‘You should know by now,’ I told him, once he’d explained the circumstances. ‘Mac spent several years peering into the distance after Jonny’s tee shots, and now he’s taking it all out on you.’

‘I think of it as making an old man very happy,’ he chuckled. ‘Now, what’s up? We’re at the coffee stage so I can talk.’

I filled him in on the Susie story. He’s neutral as far as she’s concerned, having not been around when it all kicked off, so he was more concerned about her health issue than I guessed Mac might have been. As for her legal situation, he sparked right away.

‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘that is potentially huge. As widower he’d be entitled to a percentage of her estate, even if he wasn’t named in her will. That would not include any shareholdings, but that might not matter. In the event of her demise, do you know what percentage of the company’s share capital would be held in the children’s trust?’

I had to think about that. ‘Something approaching seventy per cent,’ I told him. ‘Sixty-eight, sixty-nine.’

‘And the new husband’s uncle; does he have a personal holding?’

That one I knew, as I’d made a mental note of it the last time I’d read the Gantry Annual Report. ‘Yes, nine and a half per cent.’

‘In that case, if the children did inherit and the trust was under the control of Susie’s widower, as he would be … tell you later, Mac,’ he murmured, ‘… then he and his uncle could do anything they liked. They could sell the company out from under the minority shareholders, they could take it off the Stock Exchange, they could change its constitution.’

‘But there’s no reason to think they would do that.’

‘Of course not,’ he agreed. ‘I’m talking worst-case scenario, that’s all.’

‘In those circumstances what could I do to stop that?’

‘Mmm.’ He did some legal pondering. ‘Well, as Tom’s mother I suppose you could go to the Court of Session and seek an interdict preventing any sale, as being against his interests. The problem with that would be that you might not win. If such a case came before me, and the proposed deal had the approval of the board, I would need strong evidence before I could go against them.’

‘What can Susie do?’

‘Step one, change her will pronto. Step two, actually set up the trust now so that she can set its constitution and prevent the children’s vulnerability from being exploited. Step three, appoint a reputable non-executive chair, and put non-exec directors into a voting majority on the board. Who’s her lawyer?’

‘I don’t know, but she won’t be in a position to instruct him personally for few days.’

‘Then she could give you, or someone else she trusts, a specific power of attorney to do that for her.’ He paused. ‘But listen, Primavera, none of this may be necessary; it would assume ill-will, by more than one person. What do you know of Mr Culshaw senior?’

‘I’ve never met him, so not a lot, only what I’ve been told by Oz and Susie. He’s in his mid to late sixties, he was a big-time accountant till he retired early. He was brought into the company as a non-exec director initially, and became managing director after Janet was born and Susie backed off a little. Oz liked him; he told me that once he helped see off a threat to the business, a potential takeover by a predator company.’

‘Yes, Ellen told me about that,’ Harvey said. ‘It was called Torrent PLC, an office supplies business. It was a major company once, but it’s changed its focus, since the photocopier leasing that generated a lot of its income was upstaged by computers. That’s the area it’s in now, as I understand it. There was a
Scotsman
magazine piece on it lately. When Ellen read it she said that Oz had dealings with it, and with its present owner.’

‘Yes.’ I confirmed that. I recalled the story, although he’d never mentioned the name of the company. ‘Her name was Natalie Morgan. He told me about her. But those dealings were fairly confrontational, from what he said. As a successful businesswoman around the same age, she and Susie were seen by the media as rivals. It was true as far as Morgan was concerned: she hated Susie. That was the main reason why she tried to stage a buyout of the Gantry Group, with the support of the guy who was chairman at that time, and of a few other people who were less than clean. She nearly managed it, but Oz and Culshaw put paid to it. The old chairman fell on his sword after that and Susie’s chaired the company pretty much ever since, apart from a short period when Oz did the job.’

‘That’s more than Ellen knew,’ he remarked.

‘What’s Morgan doing now?’ I asked.

‘Same as most other people, from what I hear. Trying to see her business through some difficult marketplace conditions.’

‘I wasn’t really talking about business,’ I laughed. ‘I don’t suppose you do gossip, Harvey.’

‘I try to avoid it, but I recall Ellen mentioning something about her and Oz’s actor friend, Ewan Capperauld. That was some time ago, though.’

‘Yes, Oz did say she put it about … but never in his direction, he promised.’

I called Susie back straight away, and gave her a rundown on what Harvey had said … although I left out his worst-case scenario. She didn’t need to be thinking along those lines.

‘A non-executive chairman,’ she murmured. ‘In my darker moments, I’ve come to realise that I may have to step down soon. But … The Gantry Group might be a public company, Primavera, but I still think of it as the family firm, as it is in terms of majority control, and I don’t want to hand over to an outsider. At the moment, the board is me, Phil, Gerry Meek, the finance director, and a lady named Gillian Harvey. She’s the only non-exec just now. The company secretary’s Wylie Smith, from our law firm, but he’s not on the board. That’s his preference, not mine; apparently most solicitors don’t like to be directors of client companies. My dream was that one day, maybe another twenty years on, I’d step back and hand over to one of the kids, as my dad did with me. Now … twelve’s a bit young, eh.’

‘Just a bit,’ I conceded, grimly.

‘So I can only see one option, my dear,’ she continued, her voice firmer than it had been. ‘I want you to become non-executive chair of the Gantry Group.’

‘Me?’ I exclaimed, more loudly than was necessary. ‘I couldn’t chair a fucking whist drive.’

‘Nonsense,’ she retorted. ‘You’re a director of your brother-in-law’s wine company. And look at that job you had in the consulate; I know about some of the deals you did there. For FlyEuro, for example, and that Jack Weighley character … a journalist described him as a Scottish cult figure a couple of months back; I dropped a note saying he’d spelt it wrong.’