East of the City (36 page)

A film of tears came to my eyes. Before Tubs had a chance to face me again, I picked up my old man’s bag and walked out.

I lay on the bed, my hands behind my head on the pillow, and stared at the cracks in the ceiling. Dad hadn’t told me. If he’d told me, I thought, I could have helped. I could have paid off at least part of the debt, and I could have spoken to Sebastian too. But I knew Dad wouldn’t have wanted that. After the fights we’d had, the bust-ups over how he ran his book, the wild swings up and down, how could he have come to me and admitted that he’d been wrong all along? He couldn’t have. Not a proud bastard like him. And I’d bet good money that he hadn’t said a word to Mum about it either.

Numb, that’s how I felt. After a while I flipped open the bag, took out the ledger and thumbed through the pages. I wanted to be angry with him. I guess I was angry in a way, but I wanted more than that, I wanted to be furious, like I’d been in the old days, but somehow it just didn’t come. He’d fucked up, no question, but he couldn’t have known Mum would do what she did. And Tubs’s guess about life insurance was wrong, my old man never insured any damn thing. The price he’d paid just to make it seem like an accident, the death he’d suffered, that must have been for Mum’s sake, so she’d never know he’d done himself in. Christ. How could I be furious? He was dead.

Then I paused in my thumbing through the ledger. The bet stood out a mile, fifty thousand quid at even money, it dwarfed the other numbers on the page. In the margin Dad had written ‘S. Ward’, and on the other side was a firm ‘L’ that marked the bet as a loser for the book. There it was, recorded in my old man’s bold hand, the punt that had finally cost him and Mum their lives.

I couldn’t bear to look at it. I turned the page. There were a few more bets, then nothing, the carefully marked rows and columns all empty. The end. Race meeting over. I was about to snap the ledger closed when I noticed the last entry. It was marked as a lay-off, a bet he’d placed with someone else, but the numbers looked completely cock-eyed. According to the numbers Dad had bet £400 on a 300-1 shot, but no dog in the world had ever run at odds like that. It didn’t make the blindest bit of sense. But what really made me sit up straight was that name again, in the margin, S. Ward.

Tubs came in. I pointed out to him the weird last bet in the ledger, and I asked him what he made of it.

Tubs’s studied the thing.

‘A mistake? I said.

‘Your old man?’ Tubs frowned and shook his head.

I turned the ledger towards me. There was no L or W next to it, so no way of telling whether Dad lost or won on the bet.

‘Payout of a hundred and twenty grand,’ Tubs said. ‘Some punt.’

We looked at the numbers in silence. Then Mrs Laszlo’s voice came drifting up the stairs, she was calling for Tubs. Snapping the ledger shut, I tossed it in the bag.

Priorities, I thought. And right now the priority wasn’t figuring out some cock-eyed bet, it was stopping Fielding from banging me up in gaol. As Tubs went to the door, I thanked him for keeping my old man’s stuff safe for me.

He turned to me with a lopsided smile. ‘Your fuckin’ transparent.’

‘That bad?’

‘You want the car, why not just ask?’

Mrs Laszlo’s frail voice drifted up again. ‘Toby?’

Tubs rolled his eyes and went to see what she wanted.

D
riving Tubs’s old Mercedes was like driving a tank, but I got to the Mortlakes’ country house in just over an hour. It was after eight. I parked in a lay-by fifty yards short of their drive and walked up to the gates. The gates were open, at the end of the gravel driveway by the house I could see a dark Saab, Angela’s car. I’d checked once already on the way over, but now I took out Tubs’s mobile again and dialled Allen’s number at work. On the first ring he answered, and I immediately hung up. He was probably in another meeting with Crossland, trying desperately to hold the line on the merger. Piers Crossland would be putting the screws on. He might be a gentleman on the golf course, but in business he’d take every advantage he could get. And after the Ottoman payout, and me doing a runner, Allen’s bargaining position hadn’t gotten any stronger. But for the moment I put that aside. I took Lee’s folder out from under my arm and walked up the drive, the leafless branches scraping in the trees overhead.

In the car I’d thought of a lot of ways to approach this, but now that I’d arrived the simplest way seemed best. I didn’t have the time to frig around, not with Fielding on my case, so I walked straight up to the door and hit the buzzer. Somewhere inside, chimes rang. I glanced around, but there didn’t seem to be any security cameras. A dog started barking in the house.

When the door swung open, Angela was standing there in a paint-spattered apron. She was holding the doberman by the collar, talking to it, shutting it up, but when she saw me she stopped.

'Ian?' Surprise. No doubt about it. From Allen or Justine, maybe even Frazer, she’d heard. I was a criminal on the run. But when I shot a look at the dog, she gave a yank on its collar and stepped back. ‘Come in.'

I’d been out to the house more than a few times in the past couple of years, usually dinner parties where all the other guests were people from the market. It became one more of those stupid point-scoring things I had running with Frazer, giving each other the needle over who got invited to a meal with the boss. Petty and childish. My only consolation, looking back, was that my old man never saw me in action.

‘I suppose Allen’s told you,’ I said to Angela, following her and the doberman into the kitchen, ‘I had a visit at work from Fielding.'

‘He mentioned it.’

‘And did Allen mention he’d suspended me?’

She waved a hand towards a cabinet. ‘You’ll have to mix your own drink.' Then she knelt on the dust-sheet spread out on the floor. Around it, the kitchen chairs had all been pushed back. The doberman went over and slumped onto a giant cushion by the Aga. On the dust-sheet there was another chair, Angela picked up a brush and with neat dabbing strokes, started painting. ‘I can’t let it dry. It’s meant to look like bamboo, sodding thing’s taken me two hours.'

I said, ‘I’ll pass on the drink.’

‘I can’t believe I’m doing this. Allen was worried I’d be bored once I retired, so he put my name down for some courses.’

‘You don’t have to do it.’

‘Actually, I’m getting to like it.’ She dipped her brush in the paint, turned the chair, and set to work again. ‘Therapeutic. And I don’t have to listen to the brokers.’

‘Fielding was there to arrest me.’

She pursed her lips, concentrating hard on the chair.

‘If I hadn’t run, he’d probably have charged me with Sebastian’s murder by now.’

Angela wrapped a rag round her finger. She swiped a paint dribble off the chair. ‘Aren’t you being a bit overdramatic? You seem to have a real thing about this Fielding. Why don’t you just talk to him?’ She smiled. ‘I hope I’m not going to get done now for aiding and abetting.’

Right then the doberman lifted its head and barked. Angela turned on him and snapped ‘Shut up!’ and he dropped his head to the cushion again. ‘Bloody animal,' she said, and it seemed to me she wasn’t quite as relaxed about my visit as she’d been making out.

I set my folder down on a side table. I told her I had some underwriting slips I’d like her to take a look at.

‘Show Allen,' she said. 'Take them to Frazer. I’ve retired.’

Pulling the slips from the folder, I told her, ‘These are pieces of business written before you retired.’ No reaction. I’d been watching carefully, but there wasn’t even a flicker of the eyes. She concentrated hard on the end of her brush, laying the paint on in short even strokes. ‘Angela, aren’t you the slightest bit curious about why I’m here?’

‘I know why. You want me to talk Allen into lifting your suspension.’ She put down her brush, and faced me. ‘But I can tell you right now, I’d be wasting my breath. He is livid, Ian. Absolutely livid.’

I put up a hand. ‘That’s not why I'm here.’ Propping myself against the huge kitchen table, I flicked through the slips Lee had found. ‘Just tell me if these names ring any bells.’

Angela wiped her hands on the apron, curious now.

‘Nestrel?’ I said.

‘No.’

‘Connolly and Blythe?'

‘No.’

‘Astra Freight?'

She pushed herself up from her knees, turning away from me. ‘What are they meant to be?'

‘I haven’t finished.'

She looked like she wasn’t too happy.

‘Blaxton?' I said.

‘No.’

She was lying. And she knew that I knew she was lying.

‘There’s a couple more,’ I said, holding out the slips for her to take. When she didn’t touch them, I slipped them back in the folder. The atmosphere had changed. The dog had his head up off the cushion now, watching us closely. ‘You wrote the lead on all of them, Angela. And they all made claims.’

She remarked that she'd never claimed that she was perfect.

‘They were extremely dodgy pieces of business, Angela. Maybe you’re not perfect, but you’re more than good enough to have seen they were rotten risks.’

She quoted that old market wisdom at me, about there being no bad risks, only bad prices.

'The broker on every one of those slips,’ I said, ‘was WardSure.’

At that, finally, I got a reaction. She bent over and started hammering lids onto the paint tins with her fist. Her face was tight. ‘Where is this going, Ian?'

‘It’s the same as the Ottoman deal.'

‘I didn’t write that.'

‘No, Justine did. And I think we both know how Sebastian convinced her.’

Angela stood up straight. She gave me a look that burned.

I said, ‘Fielding wants me done for murder, Angela. Normally I wouldn’t give a toss what goes on in someone else’s private life, but I’m not going to let myself get banged up in prison just because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.’

‘I’m not answerable for Justine.’

‘That’s fine. Because I’m not talking about Justine.'

She held my gaze a second longer. Then she stooped to pick up her tins of paint. And that, I suppose, was when I knew that Tubs’s guess was right. When Angela turned away like that instead of laughing in my face. I sat down on a chair. I dropped my head. ‘Jesus Christ,' I said.

She took the paint tins and placed them on a board by the French windows. Then she came back for the brushes.

‘Angela. You and Sebastian had an affair? For more than ten years?’

‘I’ve retired.’

‘What?’

She pointed a brush at me. ‘I’m not responsible for the syndicate anymore, Ian. If there’s a problem there, it’s not for me to sort it out.’

‘Problem?’ I held up the folder, Angela’s six rotten deals. ‘Don’t you think Fielding might be interested in this?’

She seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘Why?’ she said.

‘Because, Angela, you were having an affair with Sebastian for more than ten years, you were assisting him in defrauding the market, and when he switched his attentions to your daughter, his house burnt down. And he went with it.’

She looked at me a moment, and then she did it. She laughed. A forced laugh. She took her brushes across to the bucket of water by the window. ‘Oh, come on, Ian. You can do better than that. Wronged woman goes mad with jealousy? Jilted lover takes murderous revenge?’

‘You wrote these leads.’

‘Middle-aged woman has mastectomy and goes stark raving mad?’ She swirled the brushes briskly through the water then stood up, wiping her hands on the apron. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

I looked at her. She was a woman who’d turned fifty and celebrated the occasion with a mastectomy. Jilted, that was her word. Had Sebastian dumped her for Justine? I said, ‘Is it, Angela? Really?’

She undid the apron and slid it over her head. She tossed the apron on the floor by the paint. ‘Up yours,’ she said.

She was halfway to the drinks cabinet when I told her, ‘Even if Fielding doesn’t take these deals seriously, I think Allen will.’

She stopped.

‘And the Lloyd’s Council,’ I said.

She spun round. Two weeks earlier we were friends and colleagues, and now we were — what? Sebastian hovered like a shadow between us. Turning again, she continued to the drinks cabinet and poured herself something strong. ‘Has it crossed your mind,’ she asked me, ‘that you might be making a mistake?’

‘These slips—’ I touched the folder.

‘About Sebastian and me,’ she said.

I considered the question. She hadn’t outright confirmed or denied the connection between them. So as she stood there sipping her drink and studying her newly-painted chair, I said, ‘Well, am I wrong?'

She finally sat down, crossed one leg over the other. Good legs for a fifty-year-old woman. She rested her glass against her chin. ‘No.’ She sipped her drink. ‘As it happens, you’re right. Right on the money.’ She didn’t look at me now.

‘Angela,’ I said. ‘Why?’

Smiling sadly, she took a good swig, and then her head fell back. ‘Why? Why marry too young? Why breast cancer? She took another swig. ‘Why any bloody thing?'

She looked completely drained, like she just couldn’t be bothered hiding things anymore. The mastectomy, then Sebastian’s death, and now me dredging up stuff she must have thought was buried forever. It was like she’d come to the end of the road.

I touched the folder. ‘Why’d you write these leads?'

‘Sebastian asked me to.’

‘Just like that?'

‘Were you ever in love, Ian?' When I didn’t answer, she went on, ‘At the start - what was that one - Nestrel?' It didn’t seem that important. I did the usual background check, they looked bent, so I told Sebastian I was going to turn the business down.’

‘You were already having the affair?'

‘He said he really needed the business. The brokerage. Things were a bit tight.’ Angela shrugged, remembering. ‘So I signed the lead.’

‘Knowing there’d be a claim.’

‘No,’ she said quickly.

I thumbed through the folder. ‘Connolly and Blythe? Astra Freight?' Her eyes fell. ‘You must have realized sometime, Angela. Sebastian gets you to sign all these leads, and they keep turning out stinkers. Something must have clicked.'