East of the City (19 page)

I nodded. What did he expect me to say?

Allen joined us then, and the talk immediately switched to golf. I didn’t realize how rattled I was until I topped my next shot, it went skidding into the bunker below the green. Allen and Piers went to wait up near the hole where their shots had landed. I trudged over to the bunker. What if Piers and Allen had decided to let me down easy, out here on the golf course? Was Frazer back in the Room right now doing a victory lap, handshakes and back-slaps all round?

The bunker sand was white, and still damp from the dew. My confidence back at the first tee suddenly seemed like lunacy, the dreams of a guy who had lost it.

A picture went through my mind. Me sitting at my desk, Justine at hers, and up there in Angela’s chair, Frazer grinning like the cat that got the cream. The bastard would make my life impossible. And then I thought of Kerry Anne Lammar, and the penthouse and the five-thousand-quid-a-week penalty that I couldn't even begin to afford.

There was a sharp twinge in my gut. The first sign of an ulcer? I swung at the ball, my wrists jarred as the clubhead stopped dead in the sand. The ball stayed right where it was, and a spray of sand arced up and onto the edge of the green.

Out of sight, Allen called, ‘Now the ball.’

I triple-bogeyed the next three holes.

The clubhouse change-rooms were like an echo chamber, inside the shower cubicles you couldn’t hear a thing. I stood there for a good five minutes letting the jets of hot water needle into me, with my hands braced against the wall. The subject of Angela’s successor hadn’t come up after that first time, and I was starting to hope that maybe I’d got it wrong, that I's got myself into a state for no reason. When I finally stepped out and towelled off,  I found Allen sitting on the bench by the far wall. He was alone.  I crossed to my locker.

‘Piers left already?’

'Gone up to the bar,' Allen said. He said that was the worst round of golf he'd ever seen me play.

‘Can’t win ’em all.’

‘You didn’t win any.’

The only hole Allen had won was the sixteenth, a par three where he’d fluked a tee shot that ended up six inches from the cup. It didn’t seem like the moment to mention that.

‘Something on your mind, Ian?’ 

I told him no, nothing in particular. ‘Maybe a delayed reaction. All that Cowboys and Indians with Bill Tyler. Not too good for the nerves.’

‘You want some time off?'

‘No.' I said, and he asked me if I was sure. ‘The past week, I haven’t put in two full days on the box,’ I told him. ‘The sooner I get back there the better.’

As I pulled on my jocks he binned the scorecards, staring after them. He looked like a man with worries, I hadn’t seen him like that too often before. I guess he had his reasons. His friend Sebastian was dead; Angela wasn't recovering too well from the mastectomy; the merger talks with Crossland were coming to a head. Plenty of reasons. But when he spoke again, it was about a different worry.

‘How was Justine in court?’

‘Okay.’ I reached for my shirt. 'They pushed her pretty hard. She stood up to them.’

He wanted details, so as I dressed I gave him what I could remember. I was a bit surprised really, that Justine didn’t seem to have spoken to him herself. Or maybe she had, I thought, and he was just after a second opinion. ‘Didn’t Clive call you?’

‘Wainwright's a lawyer.’

I waited for the rest of the explanation, but apparently that was it. Sitting down, I hauled my shoes and socks from the locker.

Allen said, ‘Who is this fellow, Fielding?’

I kept my head down, concentrating hard on my socks. First the left, then the right. ‘He’s a cop.’

‘I know he’s a cop, Ian. Who is he?’

Now the shoes. Left, then right. ‘Someone I used to know.' I stamped my feet firmly into the shoes. ‘Basically,’ I said, ‘he’s a prick.’

‘Wainwright tells me this Fielding came to see you in court yesterday.’

Funny how these things catch you. I sat straight up. I had to work to stop myself from smashing my foot through the locker door. The past, everything I’d thought I was done with; Fielding was reaching out, clutching at my ankles, dragging me back there.

I said, ‘He was chasing leads on Sebastian’s murder.’

‘So he came to you?’

‘He went to the court.' I got up and crossed to the basins. I ran a comb through my hair. ‘He’d heard Sebastian was involved in the Ottoman dispute. He wanted to know what it was all about, who was involved, what the stakes were.’

‘What did you tell him?’

Now I dropped my head to one side. I looked at Allen in the mirror.

‘The truth, I assume?’ he said.

‘Right,’ I said, but I was thinking, What am I missing here?

Allen got up from the bench. Slipping into his jacket, he said, ‘Confidentiality, Ian. You know how much that means to us.’

‘He’s a cop.’

‘Is he our client? If the brokers convince themselves we’re passing on confidential information about their clients, Ian, where does that leave us?’

‘You want me to lie to him?'

Allen winced.

‘If he thinks I’m lying,’ I said, ‘he’ll come after me.’

Allen raised his hand. ‘Cooperate, by all means. I’m not suggesting otherwise. Just keep it in mind that there are degrees of cooperation.' He looked grim. ‘This Fielding’s going to be stamping on toes around the market. I don’t want you to be seen helping him when he does that.’

Now I saw what had Allen so worried. He didn’t want the Mortlake Group sucked into Fielding’s investigation, made a clearing house for any market talk on Sebastian. In the eyes of the brokers and the other underwriters, we’d be tainted. Business, inevitably, would start to go elsewhere.

The far door opened, three men came in talking and laughing, their spiked shoes clicking on the tiles. Golf talk. I zipped my bag, Allen followed me out onto the terrace. He must have thought our conversation was over because he seemed surprised when I asked, ‘So what degree of cooperation do I give him?’

Allen said that was for me to judge. ‘You’re not an idiot.'

Not much, but about as big a vote of confidence as I’d had from Allen in quite a while. And as Piers Crossland was nowhere in sight, now seemed as good a time as any to mention that other business, the stuff Lee had uncovered.

‘Allen, something’s turned up on Mehmet.’

There was a long pause as he took that in. Then he nodded toward the carpark, saying that he’d come over with me now while I dumped my bag.

Clear of the terrace, out of anyone’s earshot, I told Allen what Lee Chan had found. He didn’t say a word. ‘One probable scam, and one certain,’ I finished, tossing my bag into the boot and slamming it shut. ‘And now Ottoman. I don’t think Mehmet just happens to be accident prone, Allen. The way I read it, the man’s a crook.’

Allen said, ‘That’s not how you were reading it two weeks ago. Two weeks ago it was a security balls-up at Ottoman’s hangar, and Bill Tyler’s expert evidence was going to blow them out of the water. Blow them out of the water. Your words. Or did I misunderstand you?’

‘I didn’t know Mehmet’s history two weeks ago.’

‘And now that you do, so it’s "all change”?’ His hand went up to grip the back of his neck. He turned, looking up to the clubhouse. He was, as maybe I should have guessed he was going to be, completely pissed off.

Quietly, he said. ‘They’ll crucify her.’

Justine, his daughter, his little girl. If the case turned into a messy fraud dispute, the Ottoman barristers would have Justine back in the witness chair so fast it’d make her head spin. The duffing up she’d got first time round would look like nothing. Second time up, they'd tear her to pieces.

Allen faced me. ‘We can win it on the security angle. Stick to that.’

‘I can’t.’

 ‘I’m not asking you, Ian-’

‘I mean,’ I said, ‘it might be out of my hands.’

'Christ, you didn't tell Wainwright before you told me?’

‘I haven’t told anyone. The stuff on Mehmet, it came to me through the LCO. They might have no choice. They could pass it on to the other syndicates on the Ottoman slip.’

‘Oh, great.’ He covered his eyes with one hand, shaking his head slowly. Once the other syndicates heard about Mehmet’s dubious past, they'd come pounding on Allen’s door, demanding he up the ante in court. The whole thing could turn very nasty. And Justine would be caught right in the middle. 

I said, ‘If we can pin the missing plane on Mehmet, Ottoman’ll back down. They won’t pursue the court case, and Justine won’t go through the mincer.’

Poor choice of words. Allen gave me a smouldering look, it was pretty clear now who he blamed for dragging his daughter into the firing line.

He asked me who was it in the LCO that dug up the information on Mehmet. ‘Not your bit of Filipino fluff, was it?’

Looking down at my shoes, I explained that Lee Chan was American Chinese.

‘I don’t give a flying fuck,’ he said quietly, ‘if she’s an eskimo. She wouldn’t have gone looking for problems with Mehmet unless someone sent her. And that someone, that was you, wasn’t it?’

‘Mehmet’s trying to rip us off.’

‘Oh, grow up, man. Grow up.’ He took a few steps towards the clubhouse then came back, steaming mad. ‘I don’t give a stuff if Mehmet’s a bloody criminal mastermind, that’s the police’s lookout. I’m running an insurance business, not sodding Interpol. What I’m interested in is minimizing Ottoman’s claim.’ He pointed at me. ‘That should be yours too.’

‘It is.’

‘Is it?’ He stepped up close to me, lowering his voice, ‘Then maybe you can explain why you’ve just turned a probable maximum payout of a million quid on the security angle, into a possible payout of seven million. Because that’s what it’ll be, Ian. If this fraud accusation gets floated, and we can’t prove it, the judge’ll give them the full payout. And if Mehmet’s feeling lucky he’ll come after us in the civil court for slander.’

Allen was furious. His fists clenched at his sides, his face was getting redder all the time. It set me back on my heels, not just how angry he was, but hearing him put it like that, what I’d done. There didn’t seem much point explaining that I’d got Lee Chan to dig round on Mehmet when we’d been in the middle of the K and R. What kind of an excuse was that? What Allen was saying was that I hadn’t thought it through, at least not like an underwriter should have. And standing flat-footed in the golf course car park, it occurred to me that maybe he was right.

‘If we can prove Mehmet was involved in the plane theft-’

‘If? If? Can you hear yourself?' He made a half-choked sound.

Up at the clubhouse someone called Allen’s name, we both looked over. It was Piers Crossland. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he called down, ‘Kitchen’s closing.’

 I started up the path.

But Allen said, ‘Where are you going?’

I looked back. Lunch, I said.

He kept his eyes on me. He moved his head evenly from side to side. My lunch, it seemed, had just been cancelled.

I
went out to the airport, Gatwick, where the Ottoman flights left from. They had their office out that way too. When I’d rung, they’d told me Mehmet wasn’t there, that he’d gone to their booth at the airport, they expected him to be out all afternoon. And when I’d rung the Ottoman number at the airport it was permanently engaged, so I just got in my car and went.

Stupid, I can see that now, but after my session at the golf course with Allen and Piers Crossland I felt like I had to do something. The morning had been a write-off. Just remembering that moment on the first tee — me leaning on my club, thinking how great I was, patting myself on the back for getting to the upper branches of the tree — just remembering it made my face flush with embarrassment. Then the car park, and the snub from Allen. I told myself it didn’t matter. I told myself that at least twenty times. But if it didn’t matter, how come I felt my grip tighten on the steering wheel whenever I thought about it, and how come after half an hour’s driving I still couldn’t stop thinking about it?

Finally I reached over and turned on the radio, cranked it up, and told myself one last time to forget it. By the time I got to the airport, I just about had.

The concourse was swarming with people, everyone queuing up to escape the winter, clutching tickets to somewhere warm. The Ottoman Air logo was splashed in big purple letters above three of the booths. I bypassed the queues, and asked the check-in girl if I could see Mr Mehmet.

She finished dealing with the old man in front of her, then beckoned the next passenger forward.

‘Is he here?’ I asked her.

‘If you have any complaints, you’ll have to telephone.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind. In the meantime, I’d like to speak with Mr Mehmet.’

She took the next passenger’s ticket, a middle-aged woman this time, and put the luggage through, tagging both cases. When she was done, she beckoned forward the next man from the queue.

I stepped up to the counter, blocking the way. 'Tell Mr Mehmet that Mr Collier’s here to see him. Mr Collier who insures the Ottoman Air aeroplanes.’

She gave me a cross look. ‘I don’t think he’s here.’

Nodding to the door behind her, I said, 'Do you want to check, or shall I?'

She scowled and went back through the door. Forearms resting on the counter, I dropped my head. That girl was getting paid peanuts, she had to deal with the great holiday-going public all day long, and here I was bullying her. I told myself, very firmly, to get a grip.

After a couple of minutes she came back out.

‘He isn’t here.’

Her tone had changed, she wouldn’t look me in the eye. Mehmet was there all right, but apparently he wasn’t too keen to see me.

She looked over my shoulder at the queue. ‘Next,’ she said.

Upstairs in the coffee shop, I got a table with a view over the concourse. I sat there for a while dipping biscuits in my coffee, watching the Ottoman booths, and considering my future.

Option one was to do nothing, just let things slide. But after Allen’s little lecture I knew that doing nothing was sure to cost me any chance of stepping into Angela’s shoes. If I did nothing the whole business was likely to pan out just like Allen had said, bad for Justine and expensive for the Mortlake Group, in particular the 486 box. He could put the K and R down to bad luck, but I knew how it was with Allen, he didn’t give second chances. If I sat on my hands now, Frazer was going to get the nod for Angela’s job. And I was going to be answering to my bank manager, and to Kerry Anne Lammar.