East of the City (9 page)

‘We’ll drop you after the bridge,’ he said. ‘You’ll be wanting to have a word with Allen.’

I took the lift, avoiding the Room, and went straight up to the Mortlake Group offices. Since Bill had dropped me off, I’d had fifteen minutes to think about his theory and I’d decided it was bollocks. If Max and Sebastian were working together to get the ransom money, why burn the house down and kill Eddie Pike? And why would a man as rich as Sebastian get involved in something like that anyway? It was crazy.

I found Allen at his desk. He looked up at me, hopeful.

‘Nothing,’ I said, and his face fell. I gave him the rundown on the trip to Brentwell, and halfway through my story he went over to the cabinet and poured us both a drink. When I finished mine, he went and poured us both another.

‘Max?’ Allen recapped the bottle. ‘I don’t believe it. He just turned up?’

‘Bill’s got an idea maybe Sebastian and Max are working together.’

Allen’s hand paused; he looked at me over his glass. ‘Ian, that’s got to be one of the stupidest bloody ideas I’ve ever heard.’

I raised my hands. I said it was just a feeling Bill had.

‘Bugger’s not paid to have feelings.’ He sat down, one hand on the desk, fingers tapping. ‘If there was nothing at the barn, why’d they send the message?'

‘Bill thinks maybe they were watching.’ I explained what Bill had told me. He’d said it was the kidnappers’ way of drawing the team out, getting a look at what they were dealing with.

Rocking forward in his chair, he turned over some papers. His thoughts moved on. ‘By the by, we’re due at the WardSure offices in forty minutes. They’ve lined up a meeting with Mehmet. No lawyers.’

Barin Mehmet was the owner of Ottoman Air; Sebastian had been trying to line him up for a face-to-face meeting with us for months. Until now he’d refused all our calls and fended off Sebastian’s efforts with a wall of silence. He'd seemed to be quite happy for Ottoman to take its chance in court.

‘They?’ I said.

Allen told me he’d just taken the call. ‘Some young twit. Chambers?’

Nigel Chambers. Mentally I shifted gear. Sebastian’s rescue wasn’t my responsibility, not directly, it was Bill Tyler’s, and after my surprise trip to Lower Park Barn I had a keen sense of my limitations in that direction.

Sorting out Ottoman’s claim was a different kind of headache, more familiar, one that I thought I could handle.

‘What’s he talking?' I said. ‘Settlement?’

‘Chambers wouldn’t say. Just said Mehmet would be there and it might be helpful if we went along.’

There was a knock at the door and I turned to see Angela coming in. She looked terrible, really drawn. Before she could ask, I shook my head. No news. Then I excused myself and went to dig up the paperwork on Ottoman. As the door closed behind me I heard Allen launch into the Brentwell story, and I was glad to be out of there.

As I walked across the reception, Pam, our receptionist, looked up from her magazine. ‘Did they find Mr Ward?’

I paused. ‘What was that?’

‘Mr Ward,’ she said. ‘I thought maybe they found him.’

I walked toward to the underwriters’ office. ‘Who said he was missing?’

‘He’s been kidnapped, that’s what everyone’s saying, and his house burnt down too.’

Opening the door, I turned. I saw it cross her eyes, she’d suddenly remembered my parents, and now she didn’t know which way to look. But that wasn’t what worried me. What worried me was that if Pam had heard about the K and R, someone who should have known better had talked. ‘It’s just a rumour,’ I said as I left her. ‘Do us a favour, Pam. Don’t pass it on.’

Inside the neighbouring office were three desks, all facing the centre of the room. Beside each desk was a filing cabinet. I unlocked the one for the 86 box, flicking through folders till I found the Ottoman files, four of them, bulging with copies of Bill Tyler’s investigation notes. He’d taken a good few statements from the Ottoman employees out in Turkey but their London office hadn’t been nearly so cooperative; certainly he’d got nowhere near to speaking with Barin Mehmet since their first meeting in Izmir. Thumbing through the statements, I wondered why Mehmet had suddenly popped out of his hole.

‘What’s the buzz?’

My heart sank. Frazer. He flicked the door closed behind him and ambled across to a desk. ‘Sebastian still on the critical list?’

I nodded to the door. ‘Pam’s heard.’

‘Ahha.’ He slumped into a chair. ‘Pam and everyone else with ears.’ Frazer leant forward. ‘If Allen thought he could keep it quiet he’s losing his grip.’ Then he noticed the files. I’d had them out quite a bit lately, he knew exactly what they were. ‘How’s the case going?'

‘Not bad,’ I said.

‘Justine said the barrister’s called you all over for a chat.’ He indicated the files. ‘What’s this, homework?'

‘Mehmet’s asked Allen for a meeting.'

‘Just like that?’

‘Apparently.’ I did a quick trawl through the files, making sure it was all there. Frazer’s eyes stayed on me. God knows what he was thinking. But finally he said, ‘What do you want, Ian? Do you think Allen’s going to thank you? Something extra in the bonus?’

There was one file we wouldn’t need. I put it back in the cabinet, locked it away safely, while Frazer went on.

‘Good lad, well done, suck me while you’re down there?’ He stood, smiling now, but only with his teeth. ‘You think it’ll get you Angela’s job? Give me the elbow?’ He elbowed the air.

‘I’m doing my own job, Frazer.'

He nodded toward the folders in my hand. ‘Ottoman Air, yeah? Tell me about it. Get in some practice before you have to explain it to Piers.’ Piers Crossland, he meant. The man on the other side of Allen’s merger plans. Frazer never passed up the opportunity to remind me that he and Piers Crossland had once worked on the same box together. The implication being that if Piers ended up in the driver’s seat instead of Allen, I was out.

Counting silently to ten, I headed for the door.

He called after me, ‘The big move into K and R not looking so good now, is it.’

I swung round. He drew back a moment, not sure he hadn’t gone too far. But when he saw that he’d rattled me, he smiled again. ‘If we have to pay out on Sebastian’s K and R policy, Allen will drop you so fast.' He held out his hand, opening his fingers as though releasing something that stank. ‘The only way your career’s going from here, my friend, is down.’ I suppose I could have said something. What I did was turn on my heel and walk out.

T
he WardSure offices were over on the other side of Leadenhall Market, so we walked.

Allen said, ‘Angela was asking if you’d chased up that Name.’ When he saw my blank look he explained, ‘That kook. You know, the pig-sticker.'

I told him I hadn’t had a chance yet, that there’d been no time.

‘Bloody-well make time,’ he said. His eyes were on the pavement, I don’t think he saw me wince. It felt like being eighteen again, getting a blast from my old man after a bad night at the dogs. I wasn’t used to that from Allen. Sebastian’s kidnap, I thought, was eating him.

Sebastian and Allen went way back, nearly twenty years, they’d met through some racing syndicate they’d both bought into. It was Allen who’d smoothed the path for Sebastian at Lloyd’s, and later Sebastian had returned the favour by sending plenty of WardSure’s business the Mortlake Group’s way. They played golf together sometimes, and Sebastian would often drop into the Mortlake Group offices. I suppose they were about as friendly as two blokes who do a lot of business with one another can ever be. Allen seemed to know his way to the WardSure offices pretty well too; I was going hard now to keep up.

In the lift, when we were alone, he seemed to make an effort to shake off his troubles. He inspected himself in the mirror and pulled at the cuffs of his shirt.

‘Let Mehmet do the talking,’ he said. ‘Wait and see if he mentions a figure.' A settlement figure. The amount we’d agree to pay if Mehmet dropped the court case. I asked Allen if we had a number in mind. But Allen didn’t answer. He straightened his shoulders and faced the doors. ‘Are we planning to settle?’ I asked.

The lift slowed and stopped. Allen ran a hand over his face. ‘Maybe. But if anyone asks, the only number I have in mind is zero.’

Nigel Chambers was waiting for us in the WardSure reception. ‘Allen, Ian.’ He shook our hands, trying hard to look the serious professional; it made him seem even younger than he was. ‘Mr Mehmet’s waiting, we’ll go straight through.’

The main part of their office was a big open-plan space, islands of desks in lines, and PCs everywhere. Down one end of the room was an area rigged out like a library, scores of shelves and thousands of files, racked and labelled, the full policy details for all the business they brokered. Most of the desks were empty; the WardSure brokers were out doing their rounds, touting business to various underwriters across the Square Mile.

At the far side of the room was a row of doors with nameplates, the managers’ offices, each one glass-walled. The shutters in Sebastian’s office were down. I asked after Max.

Nigel frowned. ‘You need him?’

Allen shook his head. Then Nigel opened the door to the conference room and ushered us in.

There was a packet of Gitanes on the table, and a silver lighter, and behind these was Barin Mehmet. He stubbed out his cigarette and stood. He was dark, like his picture in the Ottoman Air annual report, and he had a thick black moustache that made his teeth seem snow-white when he smiled now. Nigel did the introductions and we all sat down.

Our dispute with Ottoman had been running for months, the past few weeks of it in court. It was one of the policies the 86 box wrote the lead on while Angela Mortlake was in hospital. And though it was Justine who signed us up for it, theft and accident on the whole Ottoman fixed-wing fleet of twelve planes, it was me that was meant to be supervising her at the time. But at the time I was still trying to deal with the loss of my parents, my break-up with Lee Chan, and with Katy crying herself to sleep each night in my spare room. That’s why when Justine brought me the Ottoman slip, telling me she wanted to sign, I maybe didn’t give it quite the attention I should have. So now here we were, Ottoman suing us for a payout on their plane that had been stolen from a hangar out in Izmir, and us fighting them on their security procedures. And WardSure, the broker on the policy, trying now to broker a settlement.

‘I think I’ve got everything we need,’ Nigel said, shuffling his papers.

Mehmet told him, ‘You don’t have an agreement.’ Nigel looked up, disconcerted. ‘The only thing you need,’ Mehmet explained, ‘is an agreement. And you don’t have that there.’ He pointed to the papers. I had the impression Nigel had thought he had Mehmet’s number, but that Mehmet had suddenly blown that idea clean out of the water. Lowering his eyes to the papers, Nigel started recapping the situation, but Mehmet immediately interrupted. ‘Should we wait for Sebastian?'

Nigel kept his eyes down. ‘He’s been delayed.’

‘I’ve got time.’ Mehmet looked at Allen. When Allen said that he’d rather get started, Nigel began again. But Mehmet cut him off. ‘Is this how you normally reach an agreement, Mr Chambers?' He took a cigarette slowly from the while Nigel squirmed. ‘Some people might think you were playing favourites. I’m just one small client. On the other hand, Mr Mortlake here, you’re doing business with him every day. It wouldn’t pay you to upset him now, would it?’

Nigel said, ‘It was you asked for this meeting, Mr Mehmet.'

‘I didn’t ask to be trampled on,’ Mehmet told him. He pointed the cigarette at Nigel. ‘And unless I see Sebastian, this meeting is now concluded.’

Beside me Allen made a sound; this wasn’t going the way he’d expected. Nigel sat there like a dummy for a moment then he got up, saying he wasn’t hopeful but he’d just go and check Sebastian’s office.

He got as far as the door before Allen said, ‘Nigel. I think you should sit down.’

Nigel came back to the table and sat down.

Allen rested his forearms on the table. He studied his hands then looked up at Barin Mehmet. ‘Sebastian won’t be coming.’

‘Yes?’

‘He’s been kidnapped.'

Mehmet stared at Allen. Finally he said, ‘Is that a joke?’

Allen turned his head from side to side. Their eyes stayed locked a moment before Mehmet picked up his lighter and lit a cigarette. He blew a stream of smoke towards Nigel. Then Nigel started explaining why he hadn’t been able to say anything, but Mehmet stopped him with a glance. ‘I think,’ Mehmet remarked thoughtfully, ‘that it’s time for you to piss off, Mr Chambers' Nigel stiffened in his chair.‘In fact,’ Mehmet went on, turning to me, ‘it might be helpful if Mr Mortlake and I had a few minutes to ourselves.’

Allen nodded to me. I didn’t need a second invitation, the atmosphere in there had turned to pure poison. Nigel snatched up his papers and followed me out.

‘Wanker,’ he remarked when the door closed behind us.

Alone with him for a moment, I asked Nigel if he happened to know anything about Ottoman that hadn’t been properly gone over in court. He shook his head, his mind still back there with Mehmet. Figuring I’d done my duty by Lee Chan, I asked him then if there was any chance of a coffee. He pointed to a machine down by the filing cases then he marched off, furious. I wandered down toward the machine, but I didn't get that far. Passing Max’s office, I put my head in at the open door.

Max looked up from his desk. And then he looked past me, eyes narrowing. ‘Who you with?’

Gesturing vaguely behind me, I said I was in for a meeting with Chambers. Max beckoned me in, then he came over and closed the door. ‘You didn’t bring Tyler?’ He looked through the big window into the main office.

No, I told him.

‘Guy’s an animal.’ He returned to his desk. ‘My father’s being held by a bunch of nuts, and you’ve got an animal on the case.'

‘He knows his job.’

‘Yeah? Then how come he had you doing the GI Joe bit down at Brentwell?’ He searched through some papers. ‘I tell you, it looked pretty Mickey Mouse to me. I mean, that van, for fuck’s sake. Can’t he afford a new one?’