East of the City (20 page)

The second option was contacting Lee Chan, persuading her not to spill the beans on Mehmet, getting the situation back to where it was before I’d dragged her into it. But after a minute’s thought, I realized that was fantasyland. She’d probably done it already, and even if she hadn’t, there was no way she’d withhold information from the other syndicates. Not Lee.

That left me staring into my coffee cup, considering option three. I had to nail down the Ottoman claim as a fraud. I had to get enough evidence to make Mehmet call off his barristers, get him to see it was all over, turn tail and run. Which I suppose is why I’d driven out to Gatwick in the first place.

I’d thought my way right round the problem. Where I needed to go was right where I was.

Down at the Ottoman booths, the check-in people were still hard at it, processing passengers. I picked up my cup, watching that girl I’d bullied. Now she was dealing with some other troublesome bastard.

Mum used to try and line me up with girls just like that one on the check-in all the time. Someone’s daughter she’d met, someone’s niece. And I’d crack occasionally and take the girl out. A mistake, it just encouraged Mum to keep trying. She never really gave up. I never introduced her to Lee Chan.

Girls just like that, I thought, sipping my coffee, looking down. Then slowly the rest of the picture came into focus. That bloke at the Ottoman counter, the troublesome bastard, he looked familiar. I put down my cup, peered over the railing now. He had his back to me, I couldn't be sure. Then as I watched, he stepped up through the luggage scales, the girl tried to hold him off but he brushed past her. People started turning to see what was wrong.

He tried to open the door, then he put his shoulder to it, and I had him in profile. Nigel Chambers. I stood up.

At that moment the door opened. Nigel spoke to someone inside, the door opened some more and he went in. A security man arrived at the counter, it looked like he was asking what was up. The girl gestured behind to the open door as if telling him, ‘ask them, not me.’ He did just that, leaning over the counter and calling through to the back office. A few seconds later, out came Barin Mehmet. He smiled and patted the air, a ‘keep calm’ kind of gesture, and he had a quiet word with the security man. Satisfied, the security man soon wandered off, and Mehmet  went back through the door.

The whole thing was over in thirty seconds. Already the passengers were stepping forward again with their tickets, the incident not even a ripple in the crowd.

I headed for the stairs. But halfway down I started having second thoughts about barging right in on them. There was no guarantee I’d get that far anyway, what with the girl and the security guards around the place. Pausing, I looked over to the door. Nigel Chambers, like me, was a long way from home-ground, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out one good reason why he should have dropped in on Barin Mehmet unannounced. I went and took up a position to one side of the queues, from there I had a good view of the Ottoman door.

Less than five minutes later Nigel came out. He brushed past that girl and stepped through the luggage scales again. For some reason he seemed to be reaching for his wallet. I followed, at a distance, through the concourse. I can’t say why I did that, I guess he just seemed more accessible than Mehmet, and the fact of his being there anyway, I don’t know, it just seemed so cock-eyed.

He went out under the ‘Taxi’ sign, his hand still tucked inside his jacket. Outside, at the rank, there was a very long queue, and not a taxi in sight. Nigel was loitering at the head of the queue when I sidled up behind him. I watched as he tried to slip the first man in the queue a tenner. The second man in line saw it too. He reached over and tapped Nigel’s shoulder.

‘Your spot’s back there, sunshine. Fuck off.'

Nigel’s shoulders sagged, he retreated down the line. Some people came out through the sliding doors, pushing trolleys, and as they went by I stepped up to Nigel as if I’d just come out with these others.

‘Nigel?’ I said, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. I didn’t wait, I walked on. It wasn’t that unusual to bump into someone from the market out here at the airport. Looking back over my shoulder, I said, ‘Going into town? I’ve got my car here if you want a lift.'

He took another look at the lengthening queue, then he came and joined me. His hand went into his jacket again. When I told him I wasn’t charging for the ride, he forced a smile and let his hand fall free.

‘I guess Wainwright told you the story,’ Nigel said.

I kept my eyes on the road as we pulled onto the M25. So far all we’d done was tell each other a few lies about what we were doing out at the airport, but now it seemed like Nigel wanted to talk.

I said, ‘He mentioned you were in some kind of strife.'

‘I bet.’

‘Serious?’

His head dropped back against the headrest, he closed his eyes. ‘My job. My house. My bloody car. How serious does it get?’

I said, ‘If you think it's none of my business, Nigel, just tell me. But a year back, weren’t you blitzing it?’

‘Yep.’

‘Big clients, big bonuses?'

‘Yep.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘The guy who should be answering that question,' he said, opening his eyes, ‘is dead.’

‘Sebastian?’

‘The one and only.'

Ahead of us, a truck slowed, I moved out to overtake. The heater hummed quietly. When I pulled back in past the truck, Nigel said, ‘What kind of bonus scheme you got at your shop? Options? Cash? What?’

‘Cash.’

Nigel congratulated me. He said he’d learnt his lesson. Cash, he said, is king.

‘You took your bonus in shares?’

‘Stupidest move I ever made. Sebastian made it sound like a win on the lottery. Chance to buy into WardSure. Christ, I must’ve had my head in my arse.'

After a bit, I said, ‘I don’t see why you’re losing your house over it.’

Nigel smiled a crooked smile. ‘Yeah, well.’

That seemed to be as much as he wanted to give me. But Clive had told me the rest anyway. Sebastian Ward had offered Nigel the chance to buy more WardSure shares, over and above his bonus. WardSure lent him the money to do it against the security of Nigel’s house. Now the shares had collapsed and WardSure - or a company at arm’s length from WardSure to make it all legal - was calling in its security. A lawyer’s job. That’s where Clive came in.

‘You know what I can’t believe,’ Nigel said suddenly. ‘I can’t believe I actually bought Sebastian’s bullshit. I mean, I’m a broker. Wouldn’t you think I’d have seen it coming?'

‘If Sebastian hadn’t been killed—’

‘WardSure was already on the slide,’ he said. ‘Sebastian dying like that just tipped it over the edge.’

I told him that from where I sat in the Room, it looked like WardSure was doing fine. He smiled at that. He said you had to hand it to Sebastian, the man knew what good PR was all about.

‘Problem was,’ he said, ‘he was spending the dosh faster than we were making it. You know, he had twelve horses in training? Twelve, and all of them on the WardSure tab. How much do you reckon that lot cost?'

‘You knew that when you took the shares?’

‘Of course I knew. Everyone knew. Fuck, we were out at the tracks every Saturday knockin’ back Sebastian’s champagne, watchin’ the bloody things go round.’ He gave a strangled kind of laugh. ‘Ascot last summer, we had a private box.'

Nigel touched his forehead like he’d just woken up from some bizarre dream. But it hadn’t been a dream, at least not the box at Ascot. I’d been out there last summer too, as one of the freeloading guests. As I remembered it, the champagne was Krug and flowing like a river. Expensive days.

But the picture Nigel was painting of WardSure was very diiferent from the one in my mind, I just couldn’t get my head round it. I’d always believed Sebastian Ward was a successful man. I’d always thought WardSure was a successful company. And now what was Nigel telling me? That the whole thing was a front, the success just a trick done with smoke and mirrors?

‘But you guys had stacks of clients.’

‘Yeah,’ Nigel said. ‘And the last six months we’ve been cutting our own throats to keep them. Every time we turned round, another broking shop was being taken over. The big ones merging, all the time their costs coming down. They go for market share, drop their commission rates, what does Sebastian do?’

‘Drop the rates?’

‘The rates, but not the fucking horses.’ Nigel folded his arms, closing his eyes again.

The rain came down; It pattered against the windscreen, and I slowed and flicked on the wipers. Ahead, a blurred line of tail-lights winked on, and I slowed some more. Could I really have gotten Sebastian that wrong? I mean, this was a guy who’d come from nowhere. In the space of twenty years he’d built up an insurance broking business with a real reputation in the market, he was friends with everyone who mattered. He’d employed scores of people, paid them good money, and now what was Nigel saying, that Sebastian was bent? It just didn’t square with the bloke I’d known, the one who’d given me a leg-up into the Mortlake Group way back when.

But Nigel had blown a packet this last little while, he had a very big axe to grind. And then there was that other little fact nagging at the back of my mind: WardSure had known about Mehmet’s history, and failed to tell us.

‘Nigel, did you personally broker any slips for Mehmet before the Ottoman thing?’ Eyes still closed, he shook his head but said nothing.

The rain kept up all the way to Clerkenwell, Nigel dozed most of the way there. He seemed shattered, but he woke up at King’s Cross and directed me around the streets towards his home. By then I’d thought of a hundred ways to ask him the question, but in the end I just went with the direct approach.

‘Is Mehmet going to settle?’

‘Go left here,’ he said.

I took the left, then idled along.

At last he cracked. ‘Anyone’s guess. I’m not exactly on the bloody man’s Christmas-card list.’

‘You must have talked about the trial.’

‘With who, Mehmet?’

I nodded. Nigel turned his head.

‘Haven’t seen him,’ he told me. ‘Not since that day in the office.’

I didn’t even blink. Nor did Nigel, he gave me more bullshit about Mehmet not being the most open client they’d ever had, wasn’t that the way with wogs, never trust a man who smoked French cigarettes.

I turned where he showed me, into a small square. Nigel pointed out his house, three storeys tall and covered in scaffolding.

‘Plenty of work to do there.’

‘Someone else’s problem now,’ he said tight-lipped. When we pulled up behind the skip, he sat staring at his house. You could see it hurt him to look at the place, but he didn’t seem to be able to take his eyes off it. All the money he must have spent buying the house, then doing it up, and now when it was just about finished... He’d gambled and lost. But unlike my old man, Nigel didn’t seem to have the stomach to laugh.

He said suddenly, ‘It wasn’t me that brokered the Ottoman deal.’ He turned to face me. ‘I put all the paperwork through, but it wasn’t my baby. Uh-uh.’

‘You brought Justine the slip, Nigel. When she signed it, you were sitting right next to her. And you never said any different in court.’

He unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the door-handle. He said I could believe what I liked.

‘If you weren’t the real broker, Nigel, who was?’

He looked at the house again; it seemed to decide him. ‘Sebastian,’ he said, pushing the door open. ‘The one and only.’ As he got out he winced, his hand shot to his side. Then immediately he tried to cover the action, reaching into his inside jacket pocket. But he was hurt, like he'd been punched, and he saw that I’d seen it. He swung the door shut, stepping back onto the kerb.

I hit the button, the side window went down. ‘Sebastian brokered the Ottoman deal?’

He nodded.

‘Nigel,’ I said, ‘why’d you decide to tell me that now?’

Reaching over, he tapped the roof of my car. ‘Thanks for the lift.’ And before I could say another word, he was picking his way through the scaffolding, zigzagging his way up to the front door. Left, right; and then gone.

U
nderneath my apartment block there was a secure parking area, the bays all neatly numbered. Mine was 23, like my flat. I pulled in there, turned off the ignition and stared at the brick wall. Sebastian brokered the Ottoman deal, did that make sense? As far as I knew, Sebastian hadn’t come to the Lloyd’s Room to broke deals for at least ten years: whenever I’d seen him in the Room lately he'd been doing the social round, chatting with senior people like Allen and Angela. All the broking for WardSure was done by his employees, Nigel Chambers and the rest: Sebastian had risen way above that donkey work years ago. It didn’t make sense at all, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Nigel, finally, had told me the truth, that Sebastian really had brokered the Ottoman deal with Mehmet, and that Nigel had just fronted it with us. But why? And why had Nigel told me the story now?

At last I got out of the car, and went round to open the boot. I was reaching inside when a voice behind me said, ‘Welcome home.’

With a sinking feeling, I turned. Fielding. Him and some young guy slouching on a Jag across the way.

Fielding made a sideways movement with his hand. ‘Step away from the car.’

‘What is this?’

They came across. I reached up to close the boot but Fielding’s hand shot up, holding it open. I pulled down, he pushed up — down again, up again — then I let go and stepped back, shaking my head. I even laughed.

Fielding stooped, looking inside the boot. ‘What’s this?’

‘That,’ I said, ‘is the bag where I keep all my guns.'

He signalled to his offsider, the bloke reached in and hauled out my golfbag. Fielding looked from the clubs up to me. ‘Golf?’ Fielding looked at his offsider theatrically. ‘This isn’t the weekend. Is this the weekend?' The bloke shook his head, and Fielding said, ‘This isn’t the weekend, Collier. Don’t tell me you’ve been skiving off.'

Fielding made a tipping gesture with his hand. His offsider upended the golfbag, and the clubs slid out, clattering onto the concrete, the sound echoing around. Fielding glanced at his offsider. ‘Check the car.’