Deadly Business (26 page)

‘Okay. First, the analysts don’t know you; you don’t have a track record with them. So when you suddenly pop up as the last act of a dying woman, they’re likely to see you as a desperation gambit, someone chosen in haste because there was nobody of quality available.’

‘I was chosen in haste,’ I conceded, ‘but Susie could just as easily have appointed someone from the board. She anticipated market reaction; a small initial fall, but nothing to worry about.’

‘Yes, but then she died.’

‘And three or four per cent suddenly became forty? I might be a novice, but I’m not a fool. There are other factors involved. I want to know what they are. I might have been appointed as non-exec chair, but as you say, Susie’s death changes things. I’m forced to be hands on, to protect the shareholders, one of whom is my own son. So trust me, Cress, if you don’t spill everything you know and I find out you’ve held back on me, your firm will be history as far as the Gantry Group is concerned.’

The guys were watching me. Liam was smiling; Tom was looking as if he’d never seen me before, as I laid it on the line for the PR lady.

My message was absorbed. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I’ve been told by a couple of analysts I spoke to in the fifteen or so minutes before you called that someone’s been briefing against you. They’re saying that you have a criminal conviction for deception, and that you’ve been in prison.’

‘That’s true,’ I admitted, ‘but it was a long time ago and it had nothing to do with any sort of business activity, as Susie Gantry was well aware. You can brief in return that I’m happy to talk to anyone about it and to give them a Nigella-style critique on the standard of catering in HMP Cornton Vale. And you can add, as robustly, and publicly, as you like that anyone who suggests that it makes me an unfit person to hold the chair of a public company will be hit so hard by the ensuing writ that they will be knocked flat on their back. Now please get that message out there, and put a stop to this selling stampede.’

‘I will do, I promise,’ she replied, ‘but there’s more. I am reliably informed, although nobody will give me a source, that someone has leaked extracts from the company’s recent confidential management accounts. That more than anything else has made the institutional shareholders run for cover.’

That, I hadn’t expected. ‘Oh shit,’ I murmured. ‘Now that is trouble. I’ve just been looking at those, and there’s a great big twenty-million pound hole in them. But it’s not life-threatening and it’s a hole that I intend to plug. Would it help if you put that word around as well?’

‘Yes, it would. It would show that the new chairman is firmly in charge, and aware of the company’s position.’

‘Then do that too. Anything else,’ I asked, ‘that would turn this around fast?’

‘Buying,’ she shot back, without any pause for thought. ‘At the moment it’s all one way, but if a serious investor came in, that would stop it, at the very least.’

‘How much?’

‘About five million.’

‘Ouch! Too rich for me, in cash terms. Some of my personal wealth is in a private investment trust in Canada. I could move some stock around, but it would take time.’

‘Maybe the briefing I’m about to do will stimulate some new investors. At the very least it should stop the slide.’

‘Let’s hope so, but leave it with me anyway.’

‘What’s up?’ Liam asked as I ended the call. ‘Come on,’ he grinned. ‘Tom and I have a right to know. Remember, we’re both shareholders.’

‘And your shareholdings are under attack,’ I retorted. ‘We have an enemy.’ Breakfast came first, though; there was plenty of it. The trolley was continental rather than the notorious ‘full Scottish’, which can have pretty much anything on it, including black pudding, fried dumpling and, for all I know, for I’m out of touch, pakora.

Tom started with muesli, with a couple of vanilla yoghurts stirred into it instead of milk, while Liam and I went straight for the fruit. It took us less than ten minutes to demolish everything, down to the last piece of melon and the last slice of toast. Liam’s a fairly big guy, Tom’s fuelling his growth, and I was unusually hungry. Whether that was because I was nervy in advance of the meeting, or because of my unaccustomed nocturnal exercise I knew not, but whatever the cause I wired in as if I’d been a jungle celebrity and they’d just got me out of there.

Once we were left with nothing but slightly stewed tea, I gave them both a rundown on my discussion with Cressida. Tom stiffened in his chair when I told them that my brief run-in with the law was being used against me. It’s a part of my life that he knows about but we don’t discuss it.

I tried to tell him once that I did something wrong and that I paid for it, but he asked me, ‘Did you think it was wrong?’ I told him that at the time, I didn’t, but that sometimes the law takes a view that’s different from a person’s. ‘I don’t care,’ he declared. ‘If you thought that what you did was right, then it was. I don’t care what the law said.’ Ever since then, ‘lawyer’ has never featured among the future careers included in his list of possibles.

Liam agreed with me that my ball and chain time was ancient history and therefore irrelevant. ‘You never did anything remotely as serious as crashing a bank, honey,’ he commented, ‘and all those guys walked away scot-free. As for whoever’s leaking confidential information, in what has to be an attempt to sabotage the company, I’d like to see him thrown in clink. In fact I’d even volunteer to guard the key.’

‘What are you going to do, Mum?’ Tom asked. Before I had a chance to answer he put a second question. ‘Do I have enough money to buy shares?’

Tom knows he’s wealthy, but that’s about it. Unlike Susie, his father kept his will up to date. In it, he expressed the view that since his wife had a plenty in her own right, she didn’t need any of the fortune he left behind him. Therefore, apart from a substantial bequest to a charity established to provide for hard-up actors and actresses, it was divided among his three children to be held in trust until they reached the age of eighteen, in the care of, the will specified, ‘their legal guardians’. In Tom’s case that’s me. His seven-figure inheritance is invested by the same people who look after me, and thanks to the earnings that still accrue to the estate from DVD sales, it’s completely recession proof.

And it was going to stay that way. ‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘but you’re not going to. If I let you do that, I’d be gambling with it and I’m not going to do that. Besides, you already own six per cent of the company, and when Susie’s affairs are settled, you, your sister and your brother will own a lot more. But your shares will be equal, and I don’t believe it would be right to upset that balance.’

‘There’s nothing to stop me investing, though,’ Liam murmured. ‘I’m not minted, but I’m comfortable. I have some spare capital, and I was planning to sell my Dublin apartment. I only ever bought that for tax reasons anyway.’

‘Five million?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Nowhere near.’

‘In which case, boys, I have to look elsewhere. Tom,’ I said, ‘wheel that trolley out into the corridor, then go and sort out what you’re going to need for the day.’

‘What am I going to do today, Mum?’ he asked.

‘Well, you can’t come into the meeting,’ I said, ‘nor can Liam, even though the two of you are both shareholders. So I thought that you might spend the morning getting acquainted with Glasgow and with each other.’ I looked at them both. ‘How does that sound?’

‘Good to me,’ my partner agreed. ‘There’s some new stuff been opened down by the river since the last time I was here. You up for checking that out, Tom?’

He nodded, picked up his iPad and headed for the door, pushing the trolley as requested.

‘I’m not rushing you, am I?’ I asked Liam, once he’d left. ‘If you feel uncomfortable, just say so.’

‘About what? I don’t see myself as a child-minder. He’s a bright, mature kid, and I enjoy his company, just as I enjoyed his father’s. If you’re worried that I might put myself forward as a replacement, then don’t. I’m happy to be his mate and his mentor, but never his dad.’

I hugged him to me. After years with nobody to hug whose head came past my shoulder, I was enjoying the novelty. ‘You’re a sweet man. I’m going to miss you when you go back to Toronto.’

‘It’ll be quite a little while before I think of that. You’ve promised to show me Catalunya, remember. I have a book to do. This morning might help towards that. I brought my camera with me.’ He kissed me on the forehead. ‘Once the smoke clears, babe, we’ll be able to see the future better.’

‘Agreed,’ I said. ‘But one thing I can see already; when we do get back to Spain, you are moving out of that hotel and in with me.’

‘What was that you were saying a minute ago, about rushing me?’ He laughed.

‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured, my crest a little fallen. ‘Too big a step?’

‘Hey, I’m kidding. That would be great, this is great. If Tom’s happy with it, let’s take our thing for a test drive.’

‘Good. Now that’s sorted, let me get on with clearing the way so we can go back. I have a call to make.’

Liam went through to the Rock ’n’ Roll bedroom and left me to it. I dialled the number, straight from my contacts list. Miles answered, straight away.

‘Primavera!’ he exclaimed. ‘Hussy! I knew you and Liam would get on, but not that well. Your sister has been smirking like the cat that got the cream ever since I showed her that image. Go carefully, both of you, but have fun.’

‘Don’t worry, Miles. We’re both grown-ups; and we like each other. Listen, in your message you said I could come to you for advice.’

‘Of course. Shoot.’

I thanked him, and I did.

‘I see,’ he said slowly, when I was done. ‘Someone has got it in for you, in a big way. You reckon it’s Susie’s new husband, do you?’

‘Yes, I do. Who else would it be?’

‘I have no idea,’ he admitted, ‘but why would it be Culshaw? Doesn’t he stand to inherit?’

‘That’s another story. Susie’s will was out of date. She never changed it after Oz died. When I showed her the implications of marrying Culshaw, she asked me to do some things to ring-fence the children’s interests, and gave me legal authority to act for her. But you’re right, even in the absence of a relevant will he’s likely to be entitled to a good chunk of her assets.’

‘So, I ask again; why would he want to diminish those?’

‘To get at me, by hurting Tom. There’s something else you don’t know.’ I hadn’t told him about Culshaw’s crude attempt to extort two million from me the year before, so I updated him and told him of the get-even threat the shit had made in our last exchange.

‘Indeed?’ Miles growled when I was done. ‘Yeah, the guy is a nasty piece of work. But from the sound of things he isn’t exactly stupid either. He made that threat while Susie was still alive. You’re small beer to him now, Primavera. Still, I don’t like the idea of him having any hold over those other two kids of Oz’s.’

‘How do you think they feel about it?’ I said.

‘I know, I know.’

‘And what can I do about it?’ I moaned.

‘Could the marriage be declared invalid?’ he murmured, more to himself than to me. ‘It happened in Vegas, you said?’

‘Yes, but that doesn’t make it any less valid. Audrey Kent was the witness. I don’t imagine there’s any doubt about it.’

‘No,’ he conceded, ‘as long as all the legal requirements have been met, and as long as the person who performed the ceremony is fully licensed. Leave it with me. I’ll have that checked out. Now, about your problems in the City. If someone in the US accessed, without authority, information that’s confidential to the management of a quoted company, and used it in any way, that would break a whole raft of laws. I’m sure it will be the same in the UK. You might want to get back on to your PR people and get a list of anyone they know to have been shown this information. They won’t have any sort of privilege; you could go to court to force them to reveal the source.’

‘I can do the first part of that in two minutes and instruct the second in not much longer,’ I told him.

‘Yes but, and there is always a but … what if the information hasn’t been stolen? Who’s on the circulation list?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Normally it would be the directors and maybe also the company secretary if he isn’t on the board.’

‘He isn’t.’

‘Okay, then if I were you, before I took any action I would report what you know to the directors and ask them point blank whether one of them has been leaking information. They’ll scream bloody murder, but you can tell them it’s your duty to ask the question, and they’ll have to live with it.’

‘What if one of them admits it?’ I asked.

‘Then you push a pad and a pen across the table and ask for a resignation letter there and then.’

‘It could get messy, Miles.’

‘From what you’ve told me, Primavera, it’s messy already. Your PR lady was right, you need some public support, and you need it fast.’ He paused for a few seconds. ‘This golf course development; what do you know about it?’

‘Very little. There’s no reference in last year’s annual report, and only a couple of brief items in minutes since then.’

‘In that case, you ask the managing director for a full report, and to account for every penny that’s gone into the development so far. Then you veto any further spend.’