East of the City (15 page)

U
nderwriters get plenty of surprises, usually expensive ones, it’s the nature of the business. But Bill’s story as we’d walked back through the Greenwich tunnel, it was something else. When he’d called in the police chopper, some bright spark in the control room had remembered anther bit of information that had come through an hour earlier, a dental report on the body in the Ward house fire. Not Eddie Pike, they told Bill. It had been checked and double-checked; the body was definitely Sebastian Ward’s. The homicide people would be informed in the morning. When Bill couldn’t raise me on the two-way, he’d led the charge through the tunnel.

So who was that back there? I’d asked him.

Not our problem, he’d said.

And sitting on the 486 box the next morning, I could almost believe that. The news was out, Sebastian Ward was dead, and the WardSure shareprice had tanked. You could just about spot the WardSure brokers by the worried faces as they circulated around the Room doing business, their job prospects suddenly looking grim. One unhappy man used our photocopier to run off a dozen CVs.

‘Relieved?’ Frazer dropped his folder on the desk as he sat down opposite me, then he leant forward, grinning past the PC. ‘By the skin of your teeth, boy.' A broker approached him, I was spared any more for the moment.

Sebastian Ward was dead. He was dead and business was still being written in the market, life was going on. Somehow it didn’t seem right. The tradition at Lloyd’s when a ship goes down is to ring the Lutine Bell. The Room goes silent, everyone feels it. Something has happened. I couldn’t help feeling that there should have been something like that for Sebastian. But there wasn’t. The only way you could tell he was gone was by looking at the worried faces of the WardSure brokers.

We wouldn’t be paying out on the K and R policy either. Being completely mercenary about it, Sebastian’s premium would pretty much cover the cost of Bill Tyler’s team and — who knows? — the syndicate might even come out a few quid in front. The K and R market I’d got us into, Sebastian’s death had got us out of. Career-wise, Sebastian’s death was a real break for me. But I really could have done without any more cracks from Frazer.

Sebastian Ward was dead. A bloke who had more life in his little finger than the average Lloyd’s man has in his entire body, and he’d been snuffed out just like that. Sitting at my desk, watching business being written at the boxes around me, I felt strangely distanced, like I was watching fish feeding in some kind of aquarium. I guess I still hadn’t got my head round it, that he was gone. Sebastian Ward was dead. In my mind’s eye I kept seeing that flame-shrivelled human claw.

‘Ian, they want you upstairs.’

‘Who wants me?’

‘Allen,’ Angela said. She pushed her glasses up into her hair and rubbed her eyes. They were red, a bit puffy, like she hadn’t had much sleep since I’d called to give them the news last night. ‘He’s got Tyler with him. The police want to know what you know.’ She turned wearily to the line of brokers and beckoned the first one forward. Ever since the mastectomy she hadn’t been the same old Angela, and it seemed like Sebastian’s death had knocked her hard. ‘They’re up there too,’ she said.

As I left the box, Frazer smiled at me and waved.

Bill Tyler was wearing a suit. As I went in, he said, ‘Man of the moment,’ but he didn’t get up. The policeman did though, he was a short man in plain clothes, Allen introduced him as Inspector Dillon. ‘Inspector Dillon’s been brought in to investigate Sebastian’s death,' he said.

‘Murder,’ the Inspector said.

Allen paused behind his desk.

‘When a man’s hands and feet are tied, and someone burns a house down on top of him, homicide seems a fair guess?’ Dillon added. Then he turned to me. ‘You’re an underwriter, Mr Collier?'

‘Yes?’

‘How did you get caught on the front line last night?'

‘Long story.'

He didn’t say anything to that, just sat there and waited. So I explained about the trip down to Brentwell. I glanced at Bill for a clue about what had already been said, but Bill’s face was expressionless. When I'd finished, Dillon said, ‘Mr Tyler says that the next time they contacted him, they asked for you by name.’

Now Bill was nodding.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Any clue who they might be?'

A bit wary now, I said, ‘I don’t know. I thought after Brentwell, maybe it was someone from the dogs.’

‘The US Treasury bonds,’ Dillon said. ‘I don’t imagine they’re common currency at the dog track.'

I told him I couldn’t make much sense of it either. ‘Maybe Brentwell being an old flapping track was just a coincidence.’

‘Maybe,’ he said, unconvinced. ‘I'm told you acquitted yourself rather well last night. Perhaps they got more than they bargained for.’

I shot another look at Bill, wondering what the hell he’d told them. 

Dillon's attention turned to Allen. ‘His son Max tells me you and Sebastian were more than business acquaintances, Mr Mortlake.’

Allen explained that he was on a few of the same horse racing syndicates as Sebastian. ‘We used to see each other at the track quite a lot. Not so much lately.'

‘And is that why he took out the kidnap and ransom policy with you?’

‘He took it out with us because the Mortlake Group has a good relationship with his company.’

I was worried my role in getting Sebastian signed up for the K and R policy was about to come up, so when the Inspector glanced at me, I said, ‘We were cheaper.’

The joke didn’t go down well with Allen. He gave me a frosty look. ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘the kidnap was a hoax. Some opportunists after the payout.’

On the coffee table someone had spread out a few back-copies of the insurance trade press. Headlines about the Mortlake Group’s move into the K and R market, one with a picture of Sebastian smiling. Dillon considered all these for a moment. Looking up, he said, ‘And whose brilliant idea was it to announce to the world that Ward would be worth five million pounds to anyone who kidnapped him?’

Allen said, ‘No-one took it that seriously. Sebastian wanted WardSure to broke more K and R business. We wanted to write more.’ Allen gestured to the coffee table. ‘It was just advertising. Promotional.’

‘It sure was,’ Dillon said, and you could see Allen didn’t like that. ‘The question is whether or not these opportunists knew Sebastian was already dead. If they did -’

'Then they were the ones killed him?’ Bill said.

Dillon turned his hand over, and then back. Maybe. Maybe not. I thought of the man with the gun, and the other one with the bag on his head. Sebastian’s murderers? Without thinking, I said, ‘They might have known Sebastian was meant to be off stag hunting.' There was a pause, the real sticky kind, while the three of them faced me. ‘Max told me.’

‘When?’

When had Max told me? And then I remembered. It was a few days before Sebastian’s house burnt down, before the whole kidnap thing started.

But I said, ‘I think it was when we came over to you, with the kidnap note.’

Dillon let it pass. And I wasn't sure myself why I'd told that lie. I guess it was the way Dillon’s questions were shaping up, I didn’t like the way things kept drifting back towards me. Paranoia City, Katy would have said. But it was more than that. Dillon knew something, but he was holding it back.

Now Dillon asked Allen how Sebastian was regarded in the market.

‘He was very successful.’

‘Not the question, Mr Mortlake.’

‘He had a lot of friends, Inspector. And if you don’t mind me saying so, here at Lloyd’s we’re in the business of insuring against disasters like fires. Not causing them.’

Almost word-for-word the line I'd given Tubs. It made me squirm to hear it now from Allen. Dillon’s gaze shifted to the paintings on the walls, big red and blue slashes of paint that looked like real money. ‘Success would pay well here?’

‘Well enough,' Allen said.

‘A million a year?’

‘For some. Very few.’ Allen gestured vaguely. ‘A handful.’

‘Was Ward one of the handful?'

‘I’d be guessing.’

‘Then guess,’ Dillon said mildly.

Allen seemed to trawl the question. Maybe he sensed the same as me, that Dillon was keeping a card up his sleeve. Finally Allen said, ‘At a guess? Yes, I expect he was.’

‘House by Regent’s Park. Million a year. Mr Ward seems to have lived the life. All a bit flashy, wasn’t it?’ Dillon looked over to me now. ‘Must have put quite a few noses out of joint here. No?’

I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t like this at all.

‘For every loser that envied Sebastian,’ Allen said, ‘there were ten good men who admired him. If you’re saying there were people here who wanted him to take a fall, well then, I don’t doubt it. But in the eyes of the reasonable, he was highly respected.’

‘Because he was successful,’ Dillon said.

Allen opened a hand as if to say, Believe what you like. He had that bored look now, he put it on when he thought someone was wasting his time. Dillon must have noticed it, but he didn’t seem to give a toss.

‘Over at WardSure,’ Dillon said, ‘they told me Mr Ward had a life insurance policy here at Lloyd’s too. And another one. Key Person?’

I said, ‘Not with us.’ He raised a brow, and I explained that we’d taken on too much Key Person business, so when Sebastian’s came to us we’d turned it down.

Dillon asked who took on Sebastian’s life policy. I said I didn’t know, but he could try a few of the specialist syndicates. I gave him the numbers and he jotted them down.

‘And who would be the beneficiaries?’

I explained that on Key Person policies it was always the same, the company. In Sebastian’s case, WardSure.

‘And the life policy?’

‘Just Max, I guess.’

‘The son?’

‘There aren’t any brothers or sisters.’ I don’t know how I’d gotten dragged into telling Dillon this. Something about the way he kept his eyes straight on me. ‘Sebastian’s been divorced twenty years. So probably just Max.’

Dillon gave me another long look. He must have been wondering how come I knew about Sebastian’s family.

Then Bill piped up, ‘Max Ward was down there at Brentwell.’

Dillon said, ‘Let’s hear it,’ and Bill told him that part of the K and R story, I guess he hadn’t thought it worth mentioning before. With Sebastian dead, Bill had given up his Max-and-Sebastian conspiracy theory on the kidnap. But now, when Bill was done, Dillon’s hands came together; he seemed to mull the whole thing over. Then there was a knock at the door and Inspector Dillon’s colleague came in.

Jesus, I thought. Please, no.

Dillon got to his feet. We all got up, and he thanked us for our time. On his way to the door he looked back. ‘Mr Collier, I understand you’ve met my colleague, Detective Sergeant Fielding.’

He didn’t wait for a response, just turned and went out. Fielding gave me a lopsided grin. He ran his eyes over me in a mocking kind of way, as if my suit was some kind of pathetic disguise.

‘Watcha,’ he said, then he followed Dillon out.

‘Who’s that?’ Bill asked me.

‘No-one,’ I said.

But it was someone all right, Bill saw that, and he asked me again a few minutes later as we walked out to the lifts. There were a hundred Fielding stories I could have told him, but in the end I settled on the big one. The one I still saw festering deep behind Fielding’s eyes.

A few pubs in Walthamstow, I told Bill, just a few, still have a resident SP bookie. Usually an old bloke in the corner who studies his
Greyhound Life
, spends an hour over his flat pint of bitter, and keeps one eye fixed on the telly. In the old days there used to be a Starting Price bookie in every pub, but when the gaming laws were relaxed, legal betting shops sprung up all over, most SP bookies either gave up the game or started shops of their own. But some stayed just as they were. Old blokes who’d been around the dogs all their lives, retired, some of them, they kept the bookmaking up as a hobby. On a good night they'd cover their beers, maybe a meal, and finish fifty quid ahead. Not rich men, not in anyone’s book. And that’s what got to everyone when Fielding started shaking the old SP bookies down.

As Bill pressed the lift button, I said, ‘Fielding’s bent. Ugly, bent,’ and I told him about Peg Leg Keene.

Old Peg Leg worked in a freight yard as a lad, that’s where he had his leg crushed by a rolling lorry. After the leg was amputated the freight company gave him a clerical job. The pay was peanuts, but he worked there for almost fifty years, it was the only compensation he got for his leg. Apart from his job the only interest he had in life was the dogs. When he wasn’t down the Stow he was at the Bull and Bear, taking small bets, he was their resident SP. One day Fielding showed up, took Peg Leg aside and reminded him that SP bookmaking on unlicenced premises was illegal. He threatened to throw Peg Leg in the slammer. Either that, Peg Leg told us at the Gallon later, or cough up fifty quid. Peg Leg coughed up.

‘Community policing,’ Bill remarked wryly. He pressed the lift button again.

‘It wasn’t just Peg Leg. Once Fielding got a taste for it he was into all of them, he was making a packet out of the old buggers. Four months he was at it.’

‘They all paid up?’

‘What else could they do?’

‘So what stopped him?’

‘Me,’ I said, and this time Bill looked at me in surprise.

Everyone was pissed off with Fielding’s little venture, but nobody, not even the old man, knew quite how to stop him. Telling the cops was useless even if we’d wanted to: SP bookmaking was illegal, and the cops weren’t going to take Peg Leg’s word over Fielding’s. But then I remembered Sebastian. During the Monday night settle-ups down the Gallon I often got chatting with Sebastian at the bar. Sebastian wasn’t like anyone I knew, and when he talked about the insurance business and the City, he made that world seem real to me, not just some fantasy place where rich men swanned around in suits getting richer. And one of the things he told me about was insurance fraud. Insurance fraud and surveillance.

I never told Sebastian why I needed the gear, and he never asked. I had to practise a bit before I got it working, hiding it properly was a real pain. Even then the results weren’t great, but they did the job. All up, I put together about twenty minutes of footage: Fielding shaking down Peg Leg at the Bull and Bear, and four other old codgers in different pubs. The next week when Fielding came back for another fifty quid from Peg Leg, Tubs and Dad and me invited him into the back room where we had a projector set up. We watched about five minutes of it before Fielding hit the lights. He knew he was stuffed.