East of the City (10 page)

‘Max. Bill thought you’d want to stay here. He told you to stay here.’ I nodded to the PC. ‘They could have tried to contact you again.'

Max shrugged that off, saying he’d left his secretary to keep watch. ‘Look, what’s the odds? I’m here or I’m there, and that’s where I thought Dad was.’ He stopped searching his papers and looked up at me. ‘For Christ’s sake, Ian, it’s my old man they’ve got. My old man. What am I meant to do, sit on my arse?’

There wasn’t anything I could say to that. When it came right down to it, Max had more at stake here than anyone. He was an only child; his mother had shot through to the States and remarried donkey’s years ago, so Sebastian was all Max really had by way of a family. It was like me and Katy, just the two of them, and when I thought about it like that I could really understand what Max was feeling. Assuming, of course that Bill Tyler’s theory was wrong.

‘Tell me,’ Max said. ‘Honestly. Do you think Tyler’s up to it?’

‘He’ll get Sebastian back.’

Max studied me like he was willing himself to believe it. I asked if he'd had any other ideas.

‘Not one.’ He threw up a hand. ‘You insure him against kidnap, he gets kidnapped. What’s that say?’

Suddenly there was a commotion in the main office, we both turned to the inner window. Nigel Chambers was standing toe-to-toe with another broker, and shouting, his face twisted with rage. The other bloke was bigger; he wasn’t moving an inch. I had a feeling he was getting set to pummel Nigel through the floor. Max must have thought the same thing, he stuck his head out the door and shouted.

Nigel raved on till Max shouted a second time. The office went quiet, everyone looking over. ‘I don’t care what the problem is,’ Max said, ‘but shut it.’

Nigel made a crack that I missed. Max pointed this time. ‘Shut it, right nowl.’

Those few brokers I could see through the window were either looking at Nigel or keeping their heads down. Finally Nigel turned on his heel. Max came back in, closing the door. I asked him what that had all been about.

‘At a guess?’ Max slumped into his chair, ‘Our staff equity scheme?' He explained that Nigel, among others, had loaded up with WardSure shares that were meant to be held in escrow. The shareprice had been soft lately, but since the fire, and the rumours about Sebastian, it had moved sharply south. And now it turned out there’d been a grey market in the office too; the WardSure brokers had been trading their escrow allocations. In this grey market, Nigel had been caught long. Long and wrong. But given my own problems, my heart didn’t exactly bleed for him.

‘But listen,’ Max said. ‘This Tyler, if he’s not up to it I can get someone else. We can ship some real people.’

‘Max. What Bill told you down at Brentwell, he wasn’t kidding. You try to involve anyone else in this, Sebasdan’s K and R policy’s void. You don’t just get rid of Bill, you get rid of us too.’

He peered at me. ‘Right,’ he said tapping his forehead. Never the sharpest knife in the box, Max wasn’t improving under pressure. ‘Right.’

‘Can I make a suggestion? Let Tyler get on with his job. Do what he tells you, and no more peeking over his shoulder.'

Max screwed up his face. Then the phone rang and he grabbed it. ‘Hello,’ he said, voice strained. ‘Max Ward.’ After a second his face relaxed, he leant back in his chair. Whoever it was, it wasn’t the kidnappers so I opened the door and backed out. He gave me a wave and a bleak look of dejection. Prat though he might be, right then I felt more than a little bit sorry for Max.

On the way down in the lift I asked Allen how things had gone with Mehmet. He didn't reply. He had his arms folded and his mouth shut and he stayed like that all the way down. As we went across the foyer I asked him again.

He kept walking. ‘Do you see me smiling, Ian?' He most definitely wasn’t smiling. Their quiet chat together hadn’t gone too well at all. We were halfway back to the Lloyd’s Building before Allen lifted his gaze from the pavement. ‘Mehmet says he asked Sebastian for a meeting with us three weeks ago.’

I did a double-take. ‘Sebastian never mentioned it,’ I said as we went up into Leadenhall. ‘Not to me.’

But Allen was staring a yard in front of his feet again, lost in thought. If Mehmet was telling the truth, Sebastian, instead of bringing us together to get a resolution, as a broker was meant to, had been holding us and Ottoman apart.

I did some thinking of my own. ‘But why would he lie?’

‘Mehmet?’

‘Sebastian. It was no skin off his nose if we reached a settlement with Ottoman. Why not just tell us Mehmet wanted a meeting?' I hadn’t much cared for Mehmet, and now I cared for him even less. After all Sebastian had done for me I wasn't inclined to listen to someone blackening his name.

Soon after I turned seventeen, I wanted to buy my first car, an old banger, and I was a hundred quid short. I didn’t even tell Sebastian, he just overheard me asking some of the blokes down the Gallon for work. I think it was Tubs who told him what I really wanted, and next thing I know Sebastian’s slipped me a ton. Call it a loan, he told me when I tried to give it back. It turned out the car was a lemon, but when you’re seventeen, and broke, that kind of help means a lot. After that I used to give Sebastian tips I’d picked up from the kennels about which dogs were trying, and when. Dad would have flipped if he’d known.

‘Mehmet’s taking the piss,’ I said as we veered around some tourists pointing their cameras at the arches overhead. ‘Has to be.’

Allen considered that as we passed out from the cover of Leadenhall. The giant silver tubing of the Lloyd’s Tower came into view.

I said, ‘Did Mehmet mention a number?’

‘Seven million.’

The full claim. Unless someone had a very sudden change of heart, we were heading straight back to court. I mentioned that Clive Wainwright, our solicitor, was taking me and Justine over to see our barrister the next day. Allen suggested distractedly that Frazer could handle that. I stopped dead in my tracks. Allen went on a few steps then he stopped and looked round.

‘Frazer?’ I said.

Glancing left and right, Allen came back and took me by the elbow. He led me down the stairs to the coffee shop under the Lloyd’s Building; the place was closed for renovation. Standing outside the sealed door, we were alone. ‘Ian, your priority is Sebastian bloody Ward. If Ottoman’s going to sidetrack you—’

‘It won’t.’

‘I think it is.’

‘What does Frazer know about Ottoman?’ I said, warning bells ringing in my head. I had to think on my feet. ‘And I’ve got to do the witness bit in court anyway, Frazer can’t do that. Allen, it’d be crazy to let Frazer take over now.’

He gave me a look. He knew damn well about Frazer and me.

I opened my hands. ‘Look, you’ve already pulled me off the box. Tyler doesn’t want me hanging around him twenty four hours a day. So I’ll chase up this Name, the pig-sticker, then what? Allen, I’ve got the time. I can do it.’ I heard a faint note of desperation creeping into my voice. This idea of taking the Ottoman case away from me, I knew it must have been Frazer who put it into Allen’s head. Office politics, the new Cold War. Frazer sensed that he was back in the running again for Angela’s job, and he was turning the screws on me. ‘And the LCO,’ I said, ‘they already said they want me there tomorrow. Drop Frazer on them, they won’t be pleased.’

Allen shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away a few paces. He wasn’t a fool, he knew Frazer and I were both trying to stamp on each other’s fingers; but he also knew that what I said made sense. The Room was busy, he couldn’t afford two senior under- writers off the job. At last he decided. ‘Okay. You stay with Ottoman, but Sebastian’s still the priority.’ His pager bleeped, he took it out, glanced down and pulled a face.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘For what?’

‘Trusting me.’

He took a moment with that. Then he said, ‘I haven’t forgotten who wanted us involved in the K and R market.’ He gave me a look that sent my heart into my boots, before turning and starting up the stairs. 'So don't thank me yet, Ian,' he said.

T
here was a halo of light over the track, and lots of people walking that way. The car was warm and dry, I wasn’t looking forward to getting out.

‘Down here,’ Katy said. ‘At the end.’

I slowed, edging the car down into the lane. The Stow carpark was full, and when we’d tried to park in the old place, the spot where the old man and me always used, they’d built a supermarket on it. Now Katy was giving me directions to some other spot she knew.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked her, peering into the dark beyond the headlights.

She said she was pretty sure, at least it was still a good spot a year ago.

‘A year ago you were down at college.’

‘Yeah.’ She pointed up ahead. There was a badly battered sheet of corrugated iron that said ‘Keep Out’, and just to one side of it enough space for a car. There was a great lump of wood like a railway sleeper right across that space. I stopped the car and we got out to move the sleeper.

I said, ‘What was on six months ago, some big race?’

She grunted, heaving her end of the sleeper, it hit the ground with a thud. She swiped her hands together then rubbed them over her jeans. ‘No. I used to come back up here all the time.’ 

‘What, to the Stow?’

‘Everywhere. Wherever Dad went.’

‘The tracks?’

She nodded and gave me a sideways look. I guess she must have thought I knew that, but now she saw that I didn’t. ‘You know,’ she said. ‘Like you used to.'

Like I used to. Doing the rounds of the tracks with my old man, and after figuring out that it was taking my life nowhere, getting more and more pissed off. Not quite like I used to, I thought. While she parked the car now I tried to picture the pair of them heading off to the dogs, but all I got was a picture of the old man and me.

Once the car was parked, me and Katy made our way down to the track.

I wasn’t there for the outing, or for old times’ sake. It was Tubs I was after, I hadn’t been able to get hold of him all day. I’d spent the afternoon trying to pin a name to the Name who'd sent the pig-sticker note, but the Lloyd’s bureaucracy wasn’t too cooperative and I’d got pretty much nowhere. At home I'd rung Bill; there was no news there either. He said not to come over, tha he had my mobile number, if anything happened on the K and R he’d call. That’s when Katy'd breezed out of her room saying she was on her way to join Tubs at the dogs. I’d grabbed my coat.

The Stow. Walthamstow Stadium. For the first twenty years of my life, the centre of the world.

When the old man and me used to come here we hardly ever went through the public entrance, it was nearly always the side gate, before the crowd moved in. While he set up his stand I’d go round to the kiosk and get us some soup or something, whatever they had. Everyone knew Bob Collier. I was his son, so they knew me too. Dad and me. The olden days.

Now I shuffled forward in the queue with Katy, the turnstile ticked over.

Inside, the stand was filling up fast. Katy saw some friends, she went off to join them, and I wandered down to the rails, trackside, where the bookies had their stands. After my bust-up with Dad I didn’t come back to the Stow for almost a year. And when I did come back it wasn’t a regular thing, maybe once every couple of months, it just wasn’t the same any more. Dad was down on the rails, I couldn’t hang round down there, so I ended up sitting way back in the stand. Each year my connection with the dogs got weaker. Even when I went home occasionally to see Mum it was the one subject that never came up. Dog talk, seeing as how things were between Dad and me, was taboo.

But even though my connection with the dogs got weaker, somehow it never quite broke. There were no more Monday nights at the Gallon, but of a Friday night, every few months, I’d find myself back at the Stow. I’d get my programme, do a half-arsed study of the form, then have a few beers and a bet. Strange, really, how I seemed to need that. Something in the blood I guess.

Now I stood there with the punters, glancing from my programme up to the changing odds.

Fair Island, the four dog, was in the red everywhere; it was pretty much two-to-one the rest. But Swordplay was being offered at fours by Abes Watson, the bookie Tubs was pencilling for. 

‘Twenty on Swordplay.’

Tubs looked up sharply. Abes took my money and scratched me a ticket. ‘What the fuck you doing here,’ Tubs said quietly, pencilling my bet in the ledger.

I told him I was backing a winner. He gave me a look, and I turned the ticket through my fingers.‘Have you had any luck, Tubs?’

He didn’t answer, he looked over my shoulder at the punters just behind.

I told him I’d have to see him later anyway. ‘Collect my winnings,’ I said, but Tubs didn’t smile.

A punter reached past me, pushed fifty quid up at Abes. I drifted back into the crowd, then eased out of the crush and up onto the terraces.

The dogs were being led out. The steward was in his hunting kit up front, the kennel lads with the dogs just behind. Swordplay was a fawn bitch, shallow in the chest, she had loser written all over her.

In my pocket I fingered the betting slip. Dad used a pile of betting slips just like this one to teach me how to count. I wasn’t even at school then, I couldn’t have been five years old. He’d spread them out on the floor in the kitchen while he sat up at the table studying the form. I had to make them into stacks, then he’d call out instructions getting me to move the tickets from one stack to another and adding them up. Later on, when I got the hang of it, I wasn’t allowed to count them, I had to keep track of it all in my head. If he’d been a carpenter it would have been a toy hammer, but he was a bookie, so I got the betting slips instead. He didn’t force me to do it, he made it a game. I spent hours under that bloody kitchen table. Hell, thirty years back. A long time.

‘What've you got in this one?’ Nev Logan had come up beside me. He wasn’t looking nearly so bad as he had at the Gallon.

Swordplay, I told him.

He checked the form.

‘Just twenty,’ I said.