The Best of British Crime omnibus (29 page)

‘We were all very intrigued by your sudden and unexpected departure, and one day I hope to hear the full story. The Russians, as usual, are taciturn. The first we heard of any development was a notification that Bolting had been removed to hospital with pneumonia. The Embassy people have seen him and he is said to be getting on well. Speculation here about how you came to leave your luggage behind and take his is officially discouraged.

‘By the way, you'll be glad to hear that the waiter, Nikolai, has returned to the hotel. It was all done in the quietest way – nothing withdrawn or explained – and he won't talk, which is wise of him. He looks a little frailer, but he's very cheerful because his son has just been given a big appointment in the Lenin Hospital. He asked to be remembered to you. I know you always liked him. Clayton's bedworthy little blonde, Tanya, is back in circulation, too. At least, I don't quite mean that – she's actually been given a job in the English Language section at the University. She seems subdued, but otherwise she's much the same. I must say I hardly expected to see her again. Everyone here thinks you're keeping a great deal from us – it's a good thing you're not available for questioning!'

I sent a wire to Jeff and posted the letter off to him, and presently I got an ecstatic wire back. A few days later, my luggage was delivered at the office. It had come by Russian steamer, and was intact down to the last razor blade.

That's about the end of the story, except that one evening when I was travelling back to Fleet Street on a crowded bus my eye was caught by a large headline in the
Evening Gazette.
It said,
M.P. SENSATION,
and a smaller heading below announced, ROBSON BOLTING TAKES SOVIET CITIZENSHIP.

I thought of Arthur Gain. Whatever Bolting had done, he'd certainly paid the full penalty by become a Soviet citizen. There wasn't a worse fate than that.

David Williams was a writer best known for his crime-novel series featuring the banker Mark Treasure and police inspector DI Parry.

After serving as Naval officer in the Second World War, Williams completed a History degree at St Johns College, Oxford before embarking on a career in advertising. He became a full-time fiction writer in 1978.

Williams wrote twenty-three novels, seventeen of which were part of the Mark Treasure series of whodunnits which began with
Unholy Writ
(1976). His experience in both the Anglican Church and the advertising world informed and inspired his work throughout his career.

Two of Williams' books were shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award, and in 1988 he was elected to the Detection Club.

This one for Frank and Polly Muir

‘Should I buy shares in Closter Drug?' asked Sir James Crib-Cranton before blowing his nose. It was a large nose on a craggy, imperious face topped by snow-white hair in plenty. He thrust the linen handkerchief deep into a side pocket of the double-breasted pin-stripe jacket, then pushed a fragment of Stilton cheese on to a biscuit. The speaker's searching gaze stayed on his lunch guest through most of these small manoeuvres. Crib-Cranton was after inside information and wasn't about to miss a reaction.

‘What's your stockbroker say?' Mark Treasure responded easily, before consuming the last bit of his lemon pancakes.

It was a Thursday in early May. The two were at a window table in the panelled first-floor dining room of Crib-Cranton's club at the top of St James's Street in London.

‘My stockbroker says yes to anything that earns him commission, including bets on horses, I shouldn't wonder. All stockbrokers are the same these days. Not an objective thought between the lot of them. Too hard up, I expect,' Crib-Cranton continued loudly. He turned the distinguished head in a token, defiant searching of the room for stockbroker members of the club, of whom there were several – all of them quite as affluent as he was. ‘I'm asking about Closter Drug because it says in the prospectus that you're the Chairman. I'd forgotten that.'

‘Non-executive Chairman,' replied the forty-four year old Treasure, Chief Executive of Grenwood, Phipps, the merchant bankers.

Crib-Cranton – known as Jumbo to his intimates since international rugby-playing days – was considerably older than his companion, and the autocratic head of CCB, one of Britain's largest construction groups. He was a corporate customer of Grenwood, Phipps, and an old friend of Treasure's. His private portfolio of shares was handled by stockbrokers and not managed by the bank: this was because the self-made Jumbo begrudged paying the bank a management fee when he could have Treasure's advice for nothing.

‘I'm a simple sort of chap, of course,' he said next, without in the least meaning it. ‘But I'd have thought you needed to know a bit about pharmaceuticals to be chairman of a drug manufacturer. Even a non-executive chairman,' he said, the tone speculative not disparaging.

‘I rub along.' Treasure leaned back in his chair, wiping his mouth with his napkin. ‘I took it on for a special reason five years ago. When we agreed to finance the company.'

‘Management buy-out wasn't it?'

‘That's right. Closter was a subsidiary of Philer International. Philer bought it eight years before that, but it never really fitted. They needed to sell it to help fund something else.'

‘Philer are in sweets and soft drinks?'

‘And convenience foods,' Treasure supplied.

‘Exactly. So why dabble in pharmaceuticals in the first place?' Jumbo Crib-Cranton disapproved of what he termed over-diversification – meaning any diversification. He was in the construction business, and when he acquired other companies they were always in that business too. ‘People should stick with what they're good at,' he went on. ‘So the Closter managers came to you five years ago, did they?'

‘To the bank, yes. They wanted to go it alone. Rather than have the company sold over their heads to another drug manufacturer.'

‘And they've done well? Since they're going public next Wednesday. The prospectus in the paper yesterday looked healthy enough. The shares aren't cheap, of course. Ah,
gracias
, my dear.
Muchas gracias
,' Jumbo's big frame straightened, and he was pulling in his stomach. The look he was directing at the pretty, dark-haired waitress was shallowly benign but deeply lascivious. The girl, in a tight-fitting black dress, had brought the celery he had asked for earlier. His eyes followed the neat figure as she retreated. ‘Been here a week. Doesn't speak English. Spanish,' he assured Treasure in a confidential sort of tone. ‘I can always tell by the bearing. Did I mention it earlier?' He had, though his companion thought the supposition wrong. ‘Delicious creature.'

Treasure worried some breadcrumbs on the table with his finger. ‘But not cheap, you said?'

‘Good God, how should I know?' Jumbo's eyes narrowed speculatively. ‘Why? D' you suppose she'd er—?'

‘I mean the Closter Drug shares. You think they're expensive at a hundred and ten?' said the banker. The appearance of a pretty girl regularly distracted Jumbo from any business on hand. Treasure usually overcame such lapses by ignoring them. ‘The
Financial Times
also says we've pitched the offer price too high.'

After supporting the managers of Closter Drug when they had taken over the business, Grenwood, Phipps were now handling the public flotation of the company on the stock market. The prospectus Jumbo had referred to had been in four national newspapers a day earlier. It contained an offer to the public at large to buy shares in Closter Drug at a hundred and ten pence each, along with the ponderous information every such prospectus must carry by law, and covering four pages of newsprint.

‘I saw the comment in the
FT
. But you don't usually get these things wrong,' said Jumbo, abandoning his Spanish interest. ‘The Closter forecast looked tempting enough. Bit speculative still, is it? Four and a half million pre-tax profit on a turnover of twenty million? That's reasonable in anyone's language. Less debt than you'd expect, too. I read a good deal of the small print,' he added, as if the action was deserving of credit.

‘It's projected profit, yes. The company's not hit those kind of figures yet. But when we've paid off the loan-stock holders— '

‘Which you'll do with the flotation money. That's fair enough.' Jumbo circled the air with a stick of celery. ‘I suppose the full-time Closter directors will be millionaires overnight?'

‘Directors who took a big holding at the time of the buy-out, they'll do well, certainly. Ordinary members of staff will too. It's why they've all been working their heads off for five years. There'll be a few paper millionaires. The Managing Director for one. He'd staked everything he had. Mortgaged himself to the eyeballs to own a sizeable piece of the action.'

‘Wise man,' Jumbo scented a fellow entrepreneur.

The banker nodded. ‘He ends up with ten per cent of the company. Eight million shares.'

‘Worth eight point eight million pounds.' Jumbo did the easy arithmetic, his bushy eyebrows arching briefly as he spoke. ‘And the other directors?'

‘A bit over six per cent between the five of them. Not equally spread. The figures are in the prospectus. Incidentally, nearly half the staff became shareholders at the time of the management buy-out.'

Jumbo beamed, while chomping on the celery. ‘How many people employed?'

‘Three hundred and twenty.'

‘Hmm. Wish half my staff was keen enough to own company shares. Different kind of animal, of course.' The CCB payroll of mostly semi-skilled workers topped thirty thousand in Britain alone. ‘By the sound of it, Closter Drug is really a one man show,' Jumbo went on. ‘This Managing Director – what's his name?'

‘Larden. Bob Larden. Mid-fifties. He's a chemist by training.'

‘And the driving force with the most at stake in the business. Thruster, who believes in himself?'

Treasure frowned. ‘Maybe, but that's not the impression he fosters.'

‘Which is why he got you to be Chairman. The special reason you mentioned.'

‘Larden doesn't care to be in the spotlight.'

‘And while there are plenty of lesser directors of Grenwood, Phipps who could have taken the chair, he wanted the man with the biggest reputation and got him. Smart chap.'

‘That's overstating it. But it may have helped the credibility of the outfit for me to be involved. We wouldn't have put a director on the board at all unless they'd asked.'

‘Even though the bank's been staking them?'

‘Not our policy. Anyway, Bob Larden wanted to look like a member of a successful team, not its indispensable leader.'

‘Because that makes a small company look vulnerable? He's wrong there.' Jumbo was pontificating again. ‘People like an obvious leader, and leaders hardly ever get run over by those proverbial buses.' He'd been avoiding buses for years, along with all other forms of public transport. ‘Was Closter Drug a loser when the management bought it?'

‘More or less, yes. That wasn't the fault of the present management team though. Larden and his right-hand man, a much younger chap called Hackle, they'd been brought in from another pharmaceutical company about a year before. There really hadn't been time for them to turn the situation round.'

‘And Closter hasn't got a real wonder drug of its own yet?' Jumbo put the bull question as casually as he could.

Treasure hesitated. ‘Not quite yet. The recent success has been with me-too products. Our own versions of formulas just out of patent.'

‘At lower prices?'

‘That's about it.'

‘Sounds too simple.'

‘It's not really. You need a lot of finesse to do it profitably. There's a great deal of competition. And the Department of Health is red hot about safety.'

‘But it's still work for marketing people, not chemists?'

‘No. For both. Some of the products are identical to the ones first patented. Others are … well, refinements.'

‘Reworkings of other people's discoveries. I've heard of that,' Jumbo commented dismissively. ‘I'd have thought the lifeblood of a pharmaceutical company should be in dramatic discoveries made by dedicated researchers.' He was a romantic on plenty of subjects in addition to pretty women – and definitely on the subject of how other people should run their businesses. ‘Isn't that where the real profit is?' he pressed.

‘The first part of your premise is true. The lifeblood ought to be in discovery. Innovation. Unfortunately the bit about profit doesn't always follow,' Treasure replied, thinking that if the same applied in the construction industry, the profit-oriented Jumbo Crib-Cranton would long since have moved to pastures new. ‘It's estimated nowadays that it takes nineteen years of sales, world-wide, to cover the development cost of a new drug.'

‘Astonishing.' Jumbo fixed the celery jug with an accusing stare, as if the fault might lie inside it.

‘More so when you know that new drugs can only be patented for twenty years. And that includes the ten years or more they'll stay in the testing stages.'

‘Ten?' The speaker extracted a short piece of celery from the jug and salted the end.

‘And that's less than the average, before a new drug is approved. It's sometimes as much as fifteen.'

Jumbo shook his head as he chewed. ‘So companies like Closter could stand to do better with their me-too products than the real innovators?'

‘It could happen, yes.'

‘Which is why Closter don't do any serious research?'

Treasure shook his head. ‘I didn't say that. I was— '