Shadow Play (22 page)

‘Within a few months my entire project had changed, although officially I remained engaged solely on the biography. Just the first five weeks of proper follow-up had yielded so much, I went a bit crazy from everything I was discovering. I first had to wade through the usual flood from both sides, paeans of worship as well as the most scurrilous of rumours. Everything: they whispered he once ran girls, gold, arms, slaves,
insurgents, drugs, whatever you care to chuck into the mix. You realize why I'm not yet naming anyone. This very conversation would be a non-bailable offence. But such slander is common currency about most of these overnight badshahs of the bazaar, and so completely unusable. There is in each such life a murky period in which someone offstage suddenly shakes her wand, the miracle happens, and our Cinderella emerges one starry night with a horde of capital and a shiny new carriage, although until that morning he was a judicious little grocer or owned a tiny lottery-ticket kiosk. Yet, after the initial whispers, no one in his new circle mentions this discrepancy, at least not in public.'

I made my only interruption. ‘Couldn't it be the judiciousness though that is the true source of their capital, the dal, rice and the lottery-ticket rupees squirreled away one by one?' But it barely disrupted her flow.

‘Yes, a natural enough objection, only the numbers don't add up, not in his case, not in anyone's. I commissioned a young economist to compile some forecasts for me. From my research we came up with certain best-case scenarios of earnings and savings from their old lives, and I'd like to challenge anyone to buy their first petrochemical plant or textile factory with the profits from retailing perfumes. That is why it is a quantum leap: it's a different realm of operation, many zeros higher, in a galaxy far, far away. No official loan, no phenomenally tax-dodged under-the-mattress savings account, could ever have covered it. It would be like believing in a helicopter that promised a round-trip to Mars.

‘So, from some perverse instinct to strike dirt, I decided to follow up some of these baseless, irresponsible, malicious allegations thrown around by small-time brokers, former
neighbours, fellow traders, as well as other chronically mean-spirited friends from my own line of work. Decided isn't the right word, I found myself doing so; one day I was in Dubai, then following a few leads in Egypt, finally tying things up in the Canary Islands.

‘It was actually on the flight home from Tenerife that I developed the idea for the bigger book, the one you will hopefully introduce. What if I continued with this line of inquiry until I had a new work devoted not to any particular business luminary, but to this
specific phase
in the lives of several, hand-picked leading lights, the secret five-year-plan behind this crazy lift-off into the ranks of gigantic capital? What if I picked ten household names from three or four continents? What patterns would that reveal? Would they all have a grey period in their past, and each leave behind that same trail of unproven yet persistent rumours?

‘From then on, the idea was like a fever. Once I had my glittering short-list of six, suddenly I was flying all over to meet aging, forgotten little-leaguers: hoods, pensioned-off concierges of front-companies in the Caribbean, dealers, old sea-captains, harbour-masters, and even resentful ex-buddies and discarded partners, anyone whose name cropped up in a paper or a chat and who responded to my overtures. As the scope of my book grew, my interviewees included diplomats, civil servants, customs officers, aristocrats, oil executives and, right here in London, retired accountants, tax-avoidance specialists, wealth-management lawyers, even art collectors and estate agents. Always off the record, especially when things turned interesting, always working through an extensive list of decoy questions. In many cases they still wouldn't commit a name to words when I asked, but merely nodded or lifted an eyebrow, as if they half-suspected
I was taping them. I tell you, the amount of name-dropping I had to do to earn those interviews, and the goodwill I had to encash. I also know, if I ever want to work again as a financial reporter on this planet, I'll have to deep-throat almost all of those sources.

‘Yet each one of them added a piece to the story. Not strictly evidence, but a new layer or a missing link. Perhaps fictional for the most part – and most of it I binned – but gradually certain shapes emerged. Someone who could not have known someone else, because I was looking them up in a different country on the track of a completely distinct rumour, would unwittingly corroborate another trumped-up, boozy slander. This was the thrilling part, especially as it became too frequent an occurrence to be dismissed. Sometimes it was heart-stopping to the point where I could barely maintain my mask of casual neutrality. Of course there was no way they'd speak in sight of a pad, but I was sneakily building up a nice little archive, all with that trusted recorder you saw the other day, nestled cosily next to my delicates.'

‘Stop, slow down. You're turning me on, and I don't mean the bit about your delicates.'

She giggled. It was the only break in her self-assurance, when her energy and anticipation overcame her.

‘Raj, the things I have discovered, focusing just on that five-year period in each life, ignoring any leads to the time after they were famous. Three out of the six names are dead. So it's not just contemporary; some of this material adds up to an unofficial history of the world going back to '45, or even before, including dodgy dealings with Axis forces. In fact, I began with the departed and moved on to the aged, because the witnesses you want to unspool feel less threatened that way. I took a
sabbatical, cashed my advance, and today my passport is full of stamps. Cyprus, Argentina, Brazil, Angola, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Moscow, D.C., Grand Cayman, Johannesburg, Israel. Also, incidentally, before you ask, I have nothing left in the bank, in none of my accounts.'

It was I who kept rising and sitting down idiotically as she spoke, as if I were stifling an urge to pee. She couldn't expound rapidly enough for me, yet I noticed she never even leaned forward. Her composure was something to marvel at, considering, I was about to learn, this was the world-première revelation of her stupendous project.

‘I had three meetings lined up this week. If you're on board, this afternoon I see my lawyer. It'll be the second time ever that I pitch this spiel. So I hope you feel slightly honoured. We discuss the material I have, and he informs me by next week what would be outright impermissible, no matter if it's on tape. Then I fly out Wednesday, and dump it all on the desk of a friend in New York. We'll probably boil it down together to the stories backed by some form of supplementary evidence – documents, records, the little I could actually turn up in court archives and newspaper morgues and public record offices wherever they were cooperative. It'll break my heart to keep back the rest, but I'm mentally prepared. I have to pick my battles. You see, I had no authorization, apart from the alibi of my biography, which I claimed was about some of the world's great entrepreneurs. So all access was severely restricted, because I didn't want the purpose of the snooping to become evident at any point. Most of the red-hot stuff was earned through charm and chatter, unfortunately, and remains inadmissible as evidence.

‘But diligent cross-checking even among official balance-sheets and reports and yearbooks, of outstanding lawsuits and incomplete, long-buried news-stories – though they are the dullest, blandest, falsest versions of most such subterranean shadow-play, assuming any records are kept at all – turns up a surprising number of incongruities, if you're unrelenting enough. I tell you, if forty per cent of what has been suggested, repeated and substantiated over the past fifteen months is published, I would formally be rechristened Pandora Pereira. Not even forty, twenty per cent would be enough to fill a few more
Fahrenheit 9/11
s. Contra arms deals, A.Q. Khan's sales reps, Central Asian pipelines, East European women, Ecuadorean oil concessions, Iranian plane downings, Australian uranium, Filipino slave-girls, coups in Africa over oil and in Central America over the Panama Canal, deals with the generals of Argentina and Indonesia, and each of my living legends crops up somewhere or the other, furiously networking, lobbying, hosting, dining, midwifing, middle-manning, skulking.

‘Different incidents, different insurgencies, contracts at stake for projects and treasures on five continents. The Indonesian flies to Saudi Arabia to meet the American, the Israeli sells to the South African when he's not dealing with the Iranian, the Indian goes prospecting in Southern Sudan with the blessings of the Islamic government. Everything is financed through front companies, contacts are established with the highest ranks in intelligence or business, with
both
rebel army and government, and it's all pimped by one or more of my six lover-boys, each in the springtime of his life, handing out and pocketing the most stratospheric commissions for various inconceivable services.'

My voice must have been almost disappointed. ‘And my role is just to provide a measly foreword? Consider it done. It would be a privilege to ride piggy-back on board such an effort.'

For the first time she leaned forward. ‘I'll be brazen with you. I need more than the foreword. I need everything you can bring to this book, heft, publicity, credibility, hype. This friend I have in mind in New York would personally set type in the old-fashioned way for the pleasure of detonating such a bomb, but I need your profile. At the right time, not now, but soon, I want you to stand by me and bring everyone else on board who can shine upon us the right sort of attention.'

Nothing in her voice shook or crumpled. It wasn't incongruous to either of us that seventy-two hours ago, we were strangers. It never once occurred to me not to trust her, just as I didn't pause to ponder the consequences of my intervention. She left soon afterwards, promising to call me on Monday after hearing from the lawyer. I embraced her at the door out of sheer admiration, and she glanced back at me warmly.

‘You've been very gallant today. There is nothing you owed me. Our acquaintance is two days old, not to mention arranged and contrived as I confessed, and I haven't told you anything about the project. I haven't even named anyone yet. I promise you, all that will follow next week. We'll have a much clearer picture of what form the book will take. Part of me wants to advise you to seek counsel yourself before stepping on board. If this gets nasty, it's best you're forewarned. I won't hold this morning as binding if you decide to decline afterwards.'

‘I would never decline. I trust you. Of course I want to hear more. But I wouldn't turn you down for the world. Your book was taking shape before my eyes as you spoke. It promises
everything such a work should have: detail, character, thrill, magnitude, and the crazy part is, it'll all be true.'

She fluttered her eyelids and left. No work was possible the rest of that day. For a few hours, I scribbled on the phone pad to try and second-guess her by anticipating her list of names, from the titbits of places and events she'd hinted at in her sneak-preview. Then I Googled everyone on my list to see what I could unearth. It was already evident there was no one I could call to share the story with. Thankfully on Sunday I had a date for lunch, with friends who never let me leave until early the next morning. So I could return home and crash, and keep at bay the butterflies for another day.

Sharon texted as promised on Monday afternoon to suggest dinner the following night, at a little Sri Lankan place in Tooting (her suggestion). It seemed appropriately out-of-the-way, and we agreed to meet there directly, in front of the Broadway station.

However, I was saved the trip purely by chance when I turned the dial onto Radio 3 while getting dressed the next evening, and the brief hourly bulletin between concerts announced her murder. As is well known, it was her mother who found the body, lying in the hallway just behind the door. Sharon had invited her over for tea impromptu earlier that afternoon. They decided she was killed about an hour after that call. She had answered the doorbell to someone who'd raised a silenced handgun and shot her through the forehead. Then he pulled the door shut, and disappeared.

Having arrived at this point, although I've been prepared for it throughout the writing of this book (perhaps every other chapter
has been a deferment of this moment), I realize it isn't possible to justify my inaction of the next few days. My reluctance baffled me at first, in how it physically pinned me down. I went for a run in the park the morning after as a deliberate measure to reassure myself and restore a more balanced picture of the world outside, but then remained indoors for the next seventy-two hours. Somehow, gradually, it grew impossible to leave the house. I lay in the bath all morning, reheating the water occasionally, before moving to the large sofa under a duvet. The rest of the time I searched for information online, and read everything Sharon had ever posted. I didn't switch off the radio after that initial bulletin, and listened to all the updates. I saw pictures of her street and watched her neighbours give testimony on TV.

I expected to be contacted at any moment. Thankfully, no one visited during that time, but I expected each phone call to be from the police. I was one of the last people to have spent a significant amount of time with her, and either her lawyer or someone at her magazine would surely be aware of this. Hell, who was I kidding? From there on things might take quite an uncomfortable turn for me, if they discovered unfamiliar DNA on her person, and then matched it with mine.

But there was no point at which any of the reports hinted at specific leads, although very early on, after an initial examination of the house, the police dismissed the possibility that it was an ordinary burglary gone wrong. They focused on the meaning of the randomness: was it someone alone and deranged, or someone unknown yet organized, with a reason, or a contract, to finish Sharon?