The Best of British Crime omnibus (41 page)

At eleven thirty, when the ‘minor affair' had already acquired the makings of a major financial news event, Miss Cordwright had got back to the Managing Director for fresh instructions. She had been told her response shouldn't alter. With a second call though, she had succeeded in getting Larden to talk to the
Daily Gazette
, because it had been the only paper unreservedly to commend the flotation in the previous week. It seemed a Judas act not to give it special treatment now. Larden had also calculated it would be the paper most likely to find some kind of justification for what was occurring, if only to support its own previous judgement on Closter Drug.

‘And you are one of the directors selling out, Mr Larden?' Poundown persisted.

‘I'm a seller, yes. For pressing personal reasons. Like the others, I've been overstretched financially for some time. There's a chance to relieve the pressure now, and I'm taking it. Naturally I expect to be a buyer of the shares again before long.'

‘How long, Mr Larden?'

His gaze lifted to the photograph of his wife on his desk. ‘That's difficult to say.'

‘Is all this the result of a bad report on Seromig? A setback there?'

‘No it isn't. Quite the opposite. Seromig is likely to be a major advance in the treatment of migraine.'

‘So isn't this a crazy time to stop being a major shareholder in the company?'

‘Not if you have an overdraft the size of mine, Mr Poundown.' He did his best to sound light-hearted. ‘I'm sorry, you'll have to excuse me now. I'm late for a meeting.' This was half true: Closter-Bennet had just come through the door. ‘Look, why don't we talk again soon? Early next week, perhaps? Things will be in better perspective then.'

‘One last question, Mr Larden. Are you and the other directors selling
all
your shares in Closter Drug?'

He hesitated for a moment before he said: ‘Yes.'

‘Thank you, Mr Larden.'

It had been the question he had most wanted to avoid answering, but to have lied would have given the SAE grounds for maiming Dermot Hackle. He couldn't risk Dermot being hurt, not after what Jane had said last night.

He put the phone down and fell back in his chair, mopping his brow, his eyes still fixed on the picture of his wife.

‘The share price is down to seventy-two pence, and it's still dropping,' said Closter-Bennet after firmly closing the door behind him. ‘People in my department have found out it's the directors who are selling. A lot of them have shares themselves you know?'

Larden shrugged. ‘So do people in every other department. So what d' you suggest we do, Giles?' he questioned acidly.

The Finance Director looked more discomforted than before. He wasn't given to making snap executive decisions. His agreement to sell his shares had been made at his wife's instigation, and not merely because they had been paid for with her money in the first place.

Barbara Closter-Bennet's normal sangfroid had evaporated in the face of the kidnappers' threat about directors' wives.

‘It's just worse than I expected,' her husband continued now. ‘My broker keeps calling, advising me to stop selling. He'd sold half my holding by noon, as instructed. He doesn't understand, and I can't explain. It'll be much worse this afternoon when he unloads the second half.' Closter-Bennet spoke as though his problem was unique. He dropped into a chair, and began literally to wring his hands.

The directors had agreed about the shares being sold in timed stages, the last at three o' clock. They hoped that this would reduce the impact on the market as much as possible and spread the losses fairly between the reluctant sellers.

‘If I call a meeting of employee shareholders now, there's nothing I can say that'll mean anything. Not till the rot stops this afternoon when trading closes,' said Larden, quietly but firmly. It was an astonishing admission by someone who normally lectured others on the importance of prompt staff communications. ‘Today I can only repeat what we're saying to the newspapers, and nobody's believing that,' he went on. ‘We just have to sit it out. We'll make a staff announcement tomorrow.'

‘To encourage people to hold on to their shares?'

‘Those that still have any. More to emphasise Seromig hasn't turned into a failure.'

‘And it hasn't. And the shares are a perfectly sound investment,' Closter-Bennet protested limply. ‘Perfectly sound,' he repeated, with even less conviction than before. ‘They are, aren't they, Bob? God, the bastards have got me believing we're washed up now. When does Mark Treasure get in?'

‘On the Concorde. At six. I'm meeting him. Bringing him straight here.'

But it was after ten that evening when Larden had eventually ushered Treasure into his office. The flight had been delayed before leaving New York.

The other directors had been waiting for them, all except Mary Ricini who was at home with Rosemary Hackle.

‘The price dropped to thirty-nine pence at the end of the day,' McFee was saying, some minutes after Treasure arrived.

The Scotsman and Closter-Bennet were seated on one side of the table, with Larden and Bodlin opposite: There were glasses and coffee cups strewn about the surface.

‘There was real panic-selling after three o' clock,' McFee went on. ‘My broker rang later, just before the market closed. He said it was as well I got out when I did. Though he wasn't exactly offering congratulations. He was sore that I'd fobbed him off with a spurious reason for selling in the first place.' He shook his head. ‘He's convinced the company's in deep trouble.'

‘I imagine the whole Stock Exchange thinks the same,' said Treasure. He was seated at the top of the table, his usual place at their board meetings. There was a glass of Perrier water and a portable tape recorder in front of him. They had earlier played over the two recordings of the calls from the kidnappers. ‘When did anyone last talk to Grenwood, Phipps?'

‘Laurence Stricton rang me several times. The last time around six.' This was Closter-Bennet.

Stricton was the executive in the bank's Corporate Finance Department who had been in charge of the Closter Drug flotation. He was young and very bright. Treasure wondered what he had made of the situation since he evidently hadn't been given the true reason for what had happened.

‘My chauffeur gave me a message to ring Laurence,' he said, glancing at the time. ‘I'll do it in a minute. Just tell me, all the directors' shares had been sold by three o' clock?'

‘That was the arrangement, Mark.'

The others nodded agreement with Closter-Bennet.

‘And the lowest price up to that point?'

‘Around sixty pence. It went lower still immediately after. When the evening paper came out advising people to sell. Because the Closter directors weren't giving adequate reason for offloading their own shares. That's what the paper said.'

‘And because of an unattributed report that Seromig had gone wrong. I wonder who fed that in?' said McFee. ‘The SAE probably.'

‘Almost certainly,' Treasure responded.

‘Anyway, the newspaper advice was reported on all the television share services. That really got small private shareholders selling with the rest.' The Finance Director had pushed his chair away from the table and had his head bowed as he spoke, eyes focussed on the floor between his feet. ‘Laurence Stricton said the institutional selling was heavy from noon, except for some very large holders, customers of the bank, who accepted the bank's view.'

‘Which was that the whole thing was caused through ill-considered action by the directors?' Treasure put in.

‘Yes. And that there was definitely no setback with Seromig,' Closter-Bennet completed, glancing up at Treasure. ‘I felt very badly about keeping Laurence in the dark.'

‘Mark knows we couldn't let anyone into our confidence. Not anyone,' said Larden abruptly.

‘The bank's customers who accepted its advice shouldn't regret it,' said Treasure.

‘Did we do the right thing, Mark?' It was Stuart Bodlin who had asked the question. This was the first time he had spoken since the banker's arrival.

Treasure shrugged. ‘You took a quite reasonable course.' The words created an almost tangible sense of relief amongst the others. ‘It's no ordinary kidnap. There's no ransom to be collected. Until we get Dermot back, I don't see how anyone can find out where he's being held or who's holding him.' He leaned back in his chair. ‘You tried delaying things. If you'd hired security specialists they'd probably have advised that. They usually do.'

‘You think we should have hired specialists, Mark? But … but the SAE said— '

‘They said if we contacted anyone like that they'd find out,' Larden interrupted Bodlin's halting words.

‘Aye, and that the consequences for Dermot would be the same as if we'd told the police. You heard that on the tapes.' This was McFee, who had got up and was replenishing his whisky glass from the tray of bottles on one of the bookcases. ‘We decided it would have been too great a risk to take. They sound like murdering zealots, and we took them to be just that. We made our decision and stood by it. No heel tapping.'

Treasure admired the resolution in McFee's tone. The determined voice at Closter directors' meetings was usually Larden's, but tonight it was the Scotsman who had taken over from the desperately demoralised Managing Director.

The banker inwardly wished the group had handled the emergency in a different way, but there was no purpose in saying so now. The damage was done, but, in his view, it was possibly still repairable. Meantime Hackle appeared to be safe, and the threat to others was at least in abeyance. ‘It'd be useful if we knew the SAE's ultimate intention,' he said.

‘Haven't they achieved it already? What else is there for them?' asked Closter-Bennet.

‘If it really is them at the back of everything,' the banker answered.

‘Who else could it be?' questioned Larden.

‘I've no idea, but if it's the SAE there's a big flaw in their strategy. From what you've told me they've got no publicity and they're not looking for any. There's no suggestion that Closter has been brought down because it experiments on animals, and you've been forbidden ever to disclose there was a kidnap. It doesn't fit. Crusaders, zealots as Hughie describes them, aren't normally so reticent. It defeats their purposes.'

‘Perhaps they'll start crowing tomorrow,' said McFee, returning to the table.

Treasure shook his head. ‘But they can never do that without repairing all the damage they've done so far. Because they'd be disclosing the truth about what's happened. That you've been criminally pressured into starting a run on the shares. That there's nothing basically wrong with the company.'

‘They'll still have crippled us all financially,' Larden said, but leaning forward with rekindled interest.

‘Not necessarily. For instance, if you can buy back the shares while the price is still low.'

‘The SAE will still have rubbished Seromig,' said Bodlin, with all the feeling commensurate with being the drug's discoverer.

‘No. They'll have set it back. No more than that, surely?'

‘Long enough possibly to make it unprofitable.' This was Larden.

‘Not even that if they admit to what they've done,' Treasure insisted.

‘So you're saying what they've achieved is only short term?' said Bodlin thoughtfully. ‘Too short term? And that can't be enough for them?'

‘It might have been enough if a ransom had been paid. Providing funds for the cause of stopping animal experiments. But there hasn't been. Even though large sums of money have been involved.'

‘Lost, you mean? By us?' said Larden.

‘And by other shareholders, of course,' Closter-Bennet added in a sanctimonious aside, as though his concern might be primarily for the others.

‘But our loss could still be someone else's gain?' said McFee slowly.

‘Precisely,' the banker replied. ‘Otherwise, it might have made more sense for the SAE to do something much more dramatic and admit it.'

‘Like burning down this factory, you mean?'

‘That might not have done the company more long term harm, but at least it would have advertised the cause of the SAE. It's much more the sort of thing fanatics do if they're simply pushing a crusade.' Treasure glanced around the faces at the table. ‘No, I think the whole thing makes more sense if the SAE, or someone behind them, have an end result in mind we don't know about yet.'

‘One that can't have been achieved so far?' asked McFee.

‘Certainly.' Treasure got up and went over to the document case he had left open on Larden's desk. ‘By the way, there can't be any doubt that's Dermot's voice on the tape?' he asked, while removing a black leather notebook from the case.

‘None at all,' said Larden. ‘It's a bit muffled. Strained. But it's Dermot all right.'

‘If there is any doubt, it's easily resolved,' McFee put in. ‘His voice is recognised by the voice locks in the high security wing.'

In answer to Treasure's puzzled expression, Bodlin explained: ‘I don't believe you've been in the research labs recently, Mark. The main door is now opened by voice, in combination with a card-key.'

‘You mean you have to say a codeword?'

The scientist shook his head. ‘You just need to speak. Into a receiver.'

‘High-tech cloak and dagger,' said McFee with a wry smile. ‘Except one of Stuart's boffins proved last week a tape recording works just as well as the real thing.'

‘The makers are trying to find out why,' offered Bodlin, in an apologetic voice, as though he were responsible for the shortcoming. ‘Of course, you still need to use the card-key as well. But Hughie's quite right. If that's Dermot's voice on the tape the sensor will recognise it.'