The Clayton Account (3 page)

Morales nodded appreciatively. ‘Perhaps. But it troubles me that it seems to do very little for the rest of the people around here.’

Enrique Speer remained silent. He recognized the tone. Morales was leading up to something.

‘I was in Medellín the other day. You know what I saw? I saw dirty streets and hovels they call homes. It made me think. Why do people have to live like that, eh, Enrique?
Why
in this noble and prosperous land of ours?’ His brows rose inquisitively.

‘It seems to be the way of things in Colombia, Don Carlos.’

‘Sadly, I cannot do much for Colombia. But I could do something close to home. Did you know that half the children in this province do not even go to school?’

Speer shook his head.

‘What is it like to be sick and poor? I walked into a charity hospital, just to have a look, and … ugh! I would not wish to send my dog there!’

‘There are of course plans to regenerate the area. US Aid is particularly channelled in this direction –’

‘Plans, plans,’ Morales interrupted. ‘The gringos are so stupid. By the time the politicians and their friends in Bogotá have taken their cut, there will be barely ten cents in the dollar left over.’

‘Quite.’

‘When you have a problem, Enrique, you
hit
the problem.’ He slammed his left fist into his open right palm. ‘That’s how
I
deal with things.’

‘How can I be of help, Don Carlos?’

‘I am going to share my good fortune with the people of Medellín. I am going to build a hospital. A modern hospital with good, well-paid Colombian doctors. And two schools. Large schools, well equipped, to educate the children of the poor.’ He spoke emphatically now. ‘And housing. Lots of housing. Low-cost, but decent.’

‘That is amazingly generous!’ Speer was truly impressed.

‘Of course. But how generous? I mean, how much will it cost me?’

‘Well, there is the cost of building, inevitably, but also the continuing expense of running things.’

‘Don’t worry about running costs. The business
community
will contribute,’ he smiled. ‘The Church can give us teachers. They always talk of social justice. So, let them send their priests and nuns as teachers. No, I mean: how much to
build
?’

‘I’ll work on it.’

‘How much roughly?’

‘Fifty million, give or take … should go a long way.’

‘What am I worth, Enrique?’

‘One twenty, one twenty-five.’

‘We do it, then!’

‘I am speechless. You will give away almost half your fortune to the people of Medellín?’

‘Yes.’

‘Such a gesture will make you the most loved man in the region.’ Speer began to understand.

‘Yes?’

‘Yes. In such circumstances, anyone with a bad word to say about you, here …’ – he waved at the forests and hills – ‘would be digging his own grave.’

Morales snorted. The image appealed to him. ‘Just so, my friend. Now tell me: how do we do it?’

‘Well, you have a construction company in Spain –’

‘Constructora de Malaga. Small fry.’

‘Yes, but we could capitalize it. I’ll need to move some money around. Then it could go into joint venture with you –’

‘With the Morales Foundation.’

It was Speer’s turn to look curious.

‘My new charity. I will speak to De la Cruz and set it up. Meanwhile, you organize the money.’

‘I’ll have to go to New York, of course.’

‘You do that. And give my best regards to the Laundry Man.’

* * *

On Thursday morning Tom Clayton awoke early and went for a run on the beach. The wind had abated completely and a wintry sun was rising over the Atlantic. As he ran, breathing in the salty tang of the ocean, he went over his plans once more. Over the past two days he had made telephone enquiries. One day should be enough to accomplish what he wanted.

An hour later, having showered and dressed in appropriate travelling clothes, he locked the house and looked at it contemplatively for an instant, then walked down the path carrying his luggage to the car. The early-morning traffic between Long Island and Kennedy Airport was light. He returned the hire car, dropped his bags in the United terminal and took a taxi into Manhattan.

He first called briefly at the offices of Sweeney Tulley McAndrews, where he collected certified copies of his father’s and his grandfather’s wills. He looked at them carefully: just as expected, Pat Clayton’s will made no mention of Swiss accounts. Satisfied, Tom put both wills in his briefcase alongside the other documents he had brought from the house. By mid-morning he had taken the papers to the New York Bar Association’s headquarters, where Richard E. Sweeney’s signature was certified with apostils. He then walked to Federal Plaza and had the Bar Association’s signatures legalized by the State Department.

At one o’clock he met his sister for lunch at Gino’s on Lexington. Tom was already seated at their table when she came, elegant as always, in a new Chanel suit, attracting glances from men and women alike. More than ever, she struck Tom as the perfect likeness of their mother, exactly as he remembered her, for at thirty-seven, Tessa was almost the same age Eileen Clayton had been when she died.

They talked about the funeral, their respective partners
and
their children. Inevitably, most the conversation was about their father, and Tom noticed that Tessa kept averting her eyes.

‘Something on your mind, I think.’ His tone made it not a question.

Tessa looked up at him, then nodded. ‘Did Dad ever talk to you about the Irish thing?’

‘You mean the family in Ireland?’

‘That too, yes,’ she replied hesitatingly. Then, as Tom remained silent, she continued:

‘I mean about the Cause, the Struggle, whatever they call it.’

‘Not in years.’ Tom had vague memories of his parents’ conversations and the whispered references to Uncle Sean.

‘He hated them, you know?’

‘Dad? Hate?’ Tom could not hide his surprise.

‘With passion,’ she said sadly. ‘He blamed them – I think he meant Uncle Sean – for our losing touch with the old country.’

‘When did he tell you that?’ Even as he asked the question, Tom felt guilt flood through him: realizing how selfishly he had always pursued his own ambitions, and how little thought he had devoted to his widowed father.

‘When he came back from his trip to Ireland,’ Tessa’s eyes clouded for an instant, ‘he even cried.’

Tom took a sip of his wine and looked around the busy room as his sister regained her composure. It seemed bizarre, in this fashionable mid-town restaurant, to get upset about crazy, ancient conflicts thousands of miles away.

‘Did he mention it again?’ he enquired.

‘Not exactly,’ she recalled. ‘But last summer in the Hamptons, apropos of nothing, he was telling me about family duty – duty to the ones that stayed behind.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘I think he was asking me to renew the severed links. With the family. Dad’s profound sense of history, I suppose,’ she speculated.

‘Any idea where we start?’ Tom forced himself to smile.

‘Well … five or ten thousand apiece, for the family, wouldn’t hurt us. They are not at all well off, and I do believe it would have pleased Dad.’

‘Okay,’ Tom agreed, reaching across the table to squeeze his sister’s hand. ‘For the family, and for Dad.’ He did not mention his problem and, anyhow, a few thousand more or less would hardly make a difference.

They left the restaurant together and turned into a sun-drenched 47th Street, a torrent of New Yorkers dashing past purposefully. Yet none bumped into them. Perhaps it was the commanding aura they projected. Though Tom was six inches taller than his sister, at five feet eight Tessa was taller than most women. Tom’s unruly mop of curly brown hair somehow added to his poise and though Tessa’s hair was fair and frizzy like her mother’s, and Tom’s a reddish brown, their shared facial expressions and laughter left no doubt as to the blood relationship.

Tessa opened her handbag and took out a cashier’s cheque for $10,000.

‘My half,’ she said, smiling.

‘Ah! You expect me to deliver it as well?’ Tom jested.

‘You live closer to them.’ She looked at him with their mother’s aquamarine eyes. ‘You could hand it over in person.’

‘Across the Irish Sea.’ Tom parodied childhood ballads.

‘Across the Irish Sea,’ she echoed, threading her arm through his. Speeding up their step, they merged with the crowd.

* * *

In the afternoon Tom took his documents to the Swiss Consulate General, where an official certified the signatures of the US State Department and sealed his own signature with the Swiss crest.

Clayton checked the documents once more and replaced them in his briefcase. At five-thirty he stopped for a drink at the Pierre, called his wife in London to confirm his flight details, then took a taxi back to Kennedy for the overnight trip home.

As the plane flew towards the Arctic Circle and the Polar route to Europe, a five-course dinner was washed down with vintage champagne. Later Tom reclined his first-class seat to its full length, put on a pair of eye-shades and went to sleep. He was woken for breakfast five hours later as they descended towards Heathrow.

After a slight delay, queuing for Immigration, he picked up his bags and walked out of the terminal to find Caroline waiting in the car. Tom put his bags in the back, then deposited himself on the passenger seat and reached over to kiss his wife. Her lips were soft and she smelt of recent bath salts. Her shoulder-length, rich chestnut hair felt fresh and slightly damp as it brushed Tom’s cheek.

‘Was everything all right?’ she asked, dextrously swinging the Mercedes estate on to the London-bound carriageway.

‘Yes, thanks. I saw Tess a few more times and sorted out the paperwork with Dick Sweeney,’ he replied, but decided to keep his discovery for later.

‘I’m glad. Poor Tess. She’ll miss him terribly.’

‘Yes,’ he said softly, then added: ‘Oddly enough, so will I, though I hardly ever saw him.’

‘I know,’ she said, glancing at him and placing her left hand on his knee. ‘I know, darling.’

* * *

They had been married six years but sometimes it seemed like six months. Their life together had been like a whirlwind from the first day. Scarcely a pause, never a dull moment, and though Tom’s work demanded long hours, they always had time for each other. For impromptu shopping trips to Paris, weekends on the French Riviera, short breaks on the slopes at Verbier.

When people asked how he had met Caroline – which they always did, as an oblique reference to their different nationalities – Tom delighted in saying he had picked her up in a bar. Which was true, though he did not mention that the bar had been Annabel’s and that they had both arrived with different but overlapping groups of friends. But he vividly remembered first noticing her and how, towards the end of the evening, they had both deserted their respective escorts and decamped together to Tom’s flat.

They had been together ever since, and if Tom remained deeply American, for all his Irish roots and established expatriate status, then Caroline was the embodiment of the well-bred Englishwoman: from a six-generation line of soldiers, confident, daring and totally independent. When she had eventually taken Tom to Gloucestershire, to meet her parents, he had at first been received suspiciously. But the ice had soon melted, and today the old Colonel welcomed him with affection.

As they drove home from the airport that morning, Tom once again thanked his lucky stars and reflected with a smile that, even if he still had an eye for a pretty lady, he had been faithful to Caroline for seven years, which, considering his previous track record with girlfriends, surprised all who had known him as a bachelor. Dressed casually, without make-up, her slight, almost boyish frame looked vulnerable to Tom. He felt a strong urge to embrace her and protect her, reluctant to acknowledge that his emotions
stemmed
from guilt: from the mess he was about to bring into their lives, and which he still could not admit to openly.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked, catching a glimpse of his smile.

‘You.’

‘Good,’ she said with a mischievous grin. ‘Keep it that way!’

When they reached the house it was deserted, the children and their nanny ordered earlier to the park. Before Tom had a chance to hang his coat, Caroline had started up the stairs, barely pausing to kick off her shoes and throw her jeans down at her husband. Her mood could not have been more evident.

Later, lying on the tangled duvet, he told her about the bank account, but even then he could not be entirely truthful. He could not make himself tell Caroline – lest her dream be shattered – that all they owned could soon be taken. That his job, his career, his prospects of ever working in finance again, would go up in smoke. He could not admit that he had gambled, illegally, traded futures to his own account in breach of rules, and lost. He dared not say that, unless he plugged the holes before he was discovered, prison could be a real prospect.

Instead, for the moment, he continued to live the dream.

‘How much is half a million dollars?’ she asked. Though Caroline was neither illiterate nor innumerate, such was her Englishness that all foreign money – even the Almighty Dollar – had no value in her mind until expressed in sterling.

‘About three hundred and fifty thousand,’ he replied, then added as if reading her thoughts: ‘Plus interest, of course.’

‘How much in total, then?’ she exclaimed, sitting up suddenly and fixing her gaze on Tom’s.

‘Dunno,’ he teased, running the back of his hand over her left breast. ‘Half a million. One million. It depends how straight the Swiss want to play it.’

‘That’s it, then,’ she said happily and with finality. ‘You get that money, and we’ll have that house!’

That house
was an eighteenth-century manor, sitting on twenty-six of Wiltshire’s finest acres. Caroline had set her heart on it, for after eleven years of the London bright lights, she, like all of her class, longed for
The Country
. Caroline had little interest in money, having never been without, and though her father had offered the use of a cottage on the family estate, Tom had turned it down. We’ll have our own in time, he’d promised her.