The 2084 Precept (33 page)

"I can understand your interest," I replied,
giving him a meaningful look of my own, "but not your interest in
me. Your so-called affair is decidedly unusual, but the whole thing
may turn out to be an illusion, there may be nothing to it. That is
to say, there may be a good explanation for it, different to the
one the young lady has provided you with. Or there may indeed be
some hidden criminal machinations underway, which I agree would
need to be prevented. But none of this has anything to do with me.
I am a normal person, I am working in a normal manner, and as far
as my experience on this assignment goes, Jeremy Parker is also a
perfectly normal person and a perfectly normal businessman. Even
if, as you tell me, he has a history of mental illness in his
past."

"I see. Well…in case you
do
come
across something, here is my card. I would be grateful if you would
contact me if you notice anything strange, out of the ordinary,
anything you think might be of assistance to us."

"Now just a moment, Mr. Delsey, just a
moment. It just so happens that I am being followed. By you. And I
do not wish to be followed. Not by you and not by anyone else. In
fact, I do not want to be followed ever again until I kick the
bucket. By anybody, unless it's an erotic female, and with all due
respect you do not fall into that category. I want this following
me to be stopped. Now. And if not, you had better believe me when I
say that you and any of your gumshoe colleagues, including your
gumshoe boss, will regret it. Not in a way that could put me into
prison of course. But don't underestimate me. I am perfectly
capable of negatively affecting the personal lives of people like
you who, as it happens, have taken a conscious decision to
negatively affect mine."

A bluff of course. There
are
things
you can do, starting off in a small way like registering an annual
subscription to a pornographic magazine in the name of a happily
married man, or you can move on to child pornography. And you can
arrange for far worse things than that, far worse. But I am not the
type, I can't do things like that, no way. And even for those
unprincipled and nauseating types who can, it involves a lot of
work—or a lot of money paying somebody else to do it for you.

"I can understand your aggressiveness," he
said, "although I do not understand the need for you to express it
so unpleasantly. We will do a deal."

"A deal?"

"Yes. We will stop following you. I don't
mind telling you that we would probably stop anyway. In return,
however, I would be grateful if you would call me if anything
irregular comes to your attention. Please take note that we shall,
nevertheless, continue to observe Mr. Parker and his activities
until the matter has been cleared up one way or the other. As I am
sure you agree, this is something which needs to be continued. And
it would also be beneficial, Mr. O'Donoghue, if you did not find it
necessary to mention this conversation to him. Or to anyone else
for that matter."

"O.K.," I said, "it's a deal."

And we shook hands. He even paid for the
coffee, which made me feel bad, his salary couldn't be that much.
Still, he had a job with plenty of security, a fair compensation in
these times of economic disaster, national debt mountains swelling
like unstoppable tumors, nothing to do with the pin-striped
representatives of the people of course; somebody else had been
doing the spending and borrowing. And in any case, maybe he was
just going to include the coffee on his next expense claim.

Off he went back toward Piccadilly, taking
his moroseness, his pock-marked face and his ignorantly knotted
neckwear with him, poor guy.

I didn't feel like chess any more. It was
still sunny but it was early evening and it was becoming cool. So I
bought an IHT, found a steakhouse and had a sirloin—well done,
burnt to death as usual—and French fries. I read about the wars and
the bombs and the atrocities and the tennis and the start of the
cricket season. Cricket, just by the way, is a game—according to
Lord Mancroft—which the British, not being a spiritual people, had
to invent in order to have some concept of eternity.

I walked back to the hotel. A new girl was
at the desk. Not bad looking, quite elegant with her brown hair
done up in a bun at the back; automatic thoughts of course about
pulling it loose and proceeding on to other things. Such thoughts
are automatic, they are not within our control, nor do I wish them
to be. I gave her the friendly smile and the slightly, but only
slightly, penetrating look and received a decent smile back.

There were quite a few people in the bar
including a couple of possible females chatting to each other. But
I wasn't interested in finding out about them. Céline was very much
on my mind. I went up to my room and checked my messages. Nothing.
And so I got into bed and read a couple of stories from my current
book, a timeless collection of Stanley Ellin's amazing short
stories, and fell into the hands of Somnus, the god of sleep;
avoiding, on this occasion, those of his son Morpheus, the god of
dreams.

It was cloudy this morning but not raining.
I performed the s, s, and s routine and sat down on the bed to call
Jeremy on his alien phone. Pressed the green button.

"Good morning, Peter." He sounded as if he
were in a reasonable mood.

"Good morning, Jeremy. How are you this
morning?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he said. "And
yourself?"

"Not so bad, thanks. I spoke to the guy who
has been following me."

"Yes?"

"Yes. His name is Delsey. And he admitted
it, he didn't try to evade it. He is a police officer of some sort.
He said I was being followed because of you and certain of your
non-business activities."

"Interesting, but not a surprise. Something
like this was always a possibility. I assume it was the young lady
to whom I paid the €100,000 who reported me?"

"Correct. It could have been one of the
others, but you are right, it was her."

"Unlikely to have been one of the others, I
would say. They would have had the same thoughts as you had,
Peter."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean that they would have worked out that
I could deny it, that I could prove my identity, that I could prove
I was a successful and legal business man, and so on. Unlike the
young lady, they wouldn't have been able to show a payment to
support their story, circumstantial though that would be in any
case. Hence my assumption that it was the young lady."

"Well, and so it was."

"Presumably this Mr. Delsey questioned you?
May I ask what position you took?"

"I told him that you and I had a perfectly
normal business relationship. I told him I had received payments
from your company but that these related to consultancy services
provided to your company through the end of last year. And I denied
everything else."

"Fine. That's good to hear, Peter. You
clearly intend to go ahead and earn your money," he chuckled. "And
of course the benefit for me is that I don't have to start
searching for a new interview candidate. Will they be continuing to
keep you under supervision?"

"No. At least, that is what he said. Of
course, he might have lied. They could do it more professionally,
use different people and so on, and I probably wouldn't be aware of
it. You, on the other hand, will definitely continue to be watched.
Logical, if you think about it. You represent a big query in their
minds. Fraud, mental illness, something even worse, they just don't
know. But obviously, they have good reason to suspect something is
afoot."

“Naturally, yes…but not a problem. I don't
see how they can possibly arrest me. They might eventually wish to
haul me in for questioning but they have no facts to go on, other
than a statement from a young lady and a perplexed denial from
myself. And yes, she demanded a large advance payment, which indeed
was made. And then she broke our verbal contract, never appeared
again. Our lawyers have already commenced preparations to pursue
recovery of the sum involved via such legal procedures as are
applicable in these cases."

Jeremy paused for a moment and then added,
"And of course, if absolutely necessary, I could utilize what you
refer to as my computer-hacking skills and have them apologize
profusely and release me. As often as I would need to."

"What," I said, "if they were to cut off
your funds and your access to your companies' funds until they get
to the bottom of the matter?"

"Oh, I don't think they could do that based
on the meager facts available to them. And even if they could, I
could apply the computer-hacking to that as well. Alternatively, I
could use the other human identity I have created for myself, fully
documented of course, and use the funds that are already in that
identity's name."

He may be mad, I thought to myself, but he
has everything worked out, all the potential eventualities. And,
mad or not, there can be no denying that ability of his to
influence other people's minds. Advanced hypnosis skills.
Maybe.

"We're safe on the phone side, Peter," he
continued, "but I think we should meet without their knowledge in
future. Somewhere else, a different place. Just to avoid any
irritating inconveniences to you and, indeed, to myself. We agreed
to meet tomorrow. Would 2 p.m. suit you?”

"No problem."

"Good. I'll book a meeting room at the Ritz
Hotel for the afternoon. In my name, Parker. Better to leave Obrix
out of this. Just ask for me. I will ensure they are expecting
you."

"And if they try to follow me without my
knowing?"

"Just use some tricks that would shake them
off if they happen to be doing it. Climb into a cab to somewhere.
Change cabs and go somewhere else. Take a third cab. Whatever. And
in any case, perhaps I am exaggerating the consequences if they
find out that we're meeting. You told them we had a business
relationship. An ongoing one. So what could be more normal? It
changes nothing. See you then."

"See you then. Goodbye, Jeremy."

I was feeling more relaxed. My chances of
earning the €400,000 were still good. A few more interviews, that's
all. And I had no qualms about it. Jeremy was definitely a very
sick man but by paying me the money, he would not be harmed and nor
would anybody else. His group of companies would merely have a few
hundred thousand less available for dividends, reserves,
investments or whatever.

I checked my laptop again for messages.
Nothing. I checked my phone for messages. Nothing. Either something
has happened to her, or I'm not going to hear from her again. This
time, life’s tidal undercurrents were taking me back to somewhere I
didn't want to go.

I didn't feel like breakfast, this morning’s
mood eradicated hunger. On top of that I was running a bit late for
the first meeting at Clark's. I went down to the car, lit up a
cigarette—yes, they are good for nursing despondency as well—and
drove off to Slough. Made it in time.

Today's supplier meetings were all
different. The first one was a very satisfying one, more than
satisfying. I was midway through my initial blurb when the guy in
charge interrupted me and said, "How much?" I gave him the lie
about the analysis and ended up with the 10.2% and he didn't blink
an eyelid, just said, "We can accept that. We wish to cooperate to
the full." I kept my mouth closed although it metaphorically gaped,
widely in fact. And then we chatted away for a while about nothing
at all and then they left.

"Joe," I said, "we've been overpaying
them."

"No, I don't think so, Peter," he said with
a smile. "I think they were merely hypnotized by your prodigious
charm." Ha, so Joe has some irony in him too.

The second meeting involved us talking to a
lady sales director, a tough one. She wouldn't go beyond 5%. I told
Joe to heavily reduce our ordering, similar procedure as for
yesterday's goons.

The next meeting was after lunch and dragged
itself on into prolonged discussions, each side lying its head off
about just about everything. But in the end we ended up with the
8%. These are big percentages, I think Joe was slowly beginning to
realize just how much the previous lack of negotiating activity had
been costing the company. But it's obvious. Suppliers are not
stupid. When they see some of their customers faithfully accepting
all and any proposed price increases year after year without a
murmur, they are going to be taking the biggest margins they can
get.

The last meeting of the day was also a long
one. It didn't finish until 6 o'clock. They only wanted to assist
with 2%. But this was a bad supplier and Joe was able to wade in
with details of quality problems, exaggerating the losses incurred
by Clark's as a result, including occasions when some of our
finished product had had to be junked as a result. This scared them
up to 5%. And then Joe recited some late deliveries he had
documented, and exaggerated the production delays caused as a
result. But their only reaction to this was to promise to look into
the issues and resolve them. So then Joe showed them some of their
invoices charging Clark's for quantities ordered and he also showed
them the related delivery notes which revealed that lower
quantities had been delivered. Which had also resulted in
production problems. And then he handed them a list of Clark's
credit note claims in this connection, highlighting the ones which
had not yet been settled.

They were rattled, no doubt about it. But I
don't think they had been authorized to increase the offer they had
already made. And so I told them to go away and think about it and
let us know the result of their deliberations by next week at the
latest. I pointed out that we had been extremely cooperative in the
face of all these difficulties, and that now we were asking
them
for some cooperation in return. For added measure I
told them that we would also like some volume rebates. After all,
the rebates wouldn't arise unless we purchased predetermined
amounts, and that wouldn't hurt their sales volumes at all.