To Be the Best (57 page)

If only she were alive, Paula thought. Tears came into her eyes. She felt so alone.

Patting her eyes with her handkerchief, she sat down on the sofa, continuing to study her grandmother’s face. She began to twist the hankie in her hands fretfully, asking herself how the brilliant Emma Harte would have extricated herself from such an appalling situation.

But no sudden insights or clever solutions came to Paula, and in her anxiety she began to shred the lace hankie into tiny pieces. Her nerves were taut, she was paralysed by apprehension. She leaned back against the sofa, closed her eyes, trying to compose herself, hoping to bring some order to her turbulent and disturbing thoughts.

The chiming of the hour made Paula sit up swiftly. She glanced at the clock on the chimney piece. To her astonishment it was nine o’clock. Where had the time gone? Had she dozed? She realized she had been sitting on the sofa for over an hour.

Rising, she went to the desk, picked up the phone, instantly dropped the receiver back into the cradle. There was no point in calling Shane now. He had enough to cope with. Her news would only distress him. Far better to wait until tomorrow, or the day after, to tell him, when she had worked out some sort of strategy. And she would most certainly have to do that, find a way to block Jonathan Ainsley’s takeover bid for Harte’s.
She could not let it happen.

The feeling of claustrophobia she had experienced in the board room of the Rossiter Merchant Bank gripped her again. She felt as if she was suffocating, had the sudden
pressing need to escape this room, to be outside, to breathe in fresh air.

Snatching up her bag, she flew out of the office, took the staff elevator down to the ground floor. And with a brisk goodnight to the security guard on duty, she left the store.

The air was crisp on this Wednesday evening, rather chilly for September. But Paula welcomed the coolness, found it refreshing. Certainly it seemed to revive her as she hurried away from the main thoroughfare of Knightsbridge, headed in the direction of her house in Belgrave Square.

Ever since she had left the bank in the City she had felt dazed, unnerved, and panicked. But slowly, as she walked, these negative feelings were starting to lift. She had no idea what she would do, how she would proceed with Jonathan Ainsley, but she did know it was going to be an all-out war between them. And she was determined now to fight him with everything she had, do everything in her power to win. She could not afford to lose. Her cousin would be a cool, calculating and devious adversary, she had no doubt about that. His threat had not been an idle one. He was in deadly earnest, would stop at nothing. He wanted the Harte stores. Equally as important, he wanted – no, needed – to ruin her. Manifold emotions were tangled up in his drives. And not the least of them was his overwhelming jealousy of her which he had harboured since their childhood.

Unexpectedly, it occurred to her there were several possible ways to out-manoeuvre Jonathan. But would they work? Were they viable? She wondered if one of them was even legal. She was not sure. She would have to check Harte’s papers of incorporation tomorrow. She made a mental note to call John Crawford, her solicitor, when she got home. She was obviously going to need legal counsel.

Her brain was functioning again.
This realization gave her a
great sense of relief. Her mind began to race, and so intent was she on her mental machinations that she was unaware she had bypassed her house until she found herself crossing Eaton Square.

She knew at once exactly where she was going. To see Sir Ronald Kallinski. Her Uncle Ronnie, her wise rabbi. He was the only one who could help her, guide her as Emma Harte would have guided her had she been alive.

Wilberson, Sir Ronald Kallinski’s butler, opened the door of the Eaton Square house a few seconds after Paula rang the bell.

A look of surprise crossed his face when he saw her standing on the front steps. ‘Why, Mrs O’Neill, good evening,’ he said, inclining his head politely.

‘Is Sir Ronald at home, Wilberson? I must see him urgently.’

‘But he’s entertaining guests this evening, Mrs O’Neill. A dinner party is in progress.’

‘This is an emergency, Wilberson. Please tell Sir Ronald I’m here.’ Before the butler could stop her, she walked right past him into the marble entrance hall hung with antique French tapestries. ‘I’ll wait in here,’ she said firmly, pushing open the door of the library.

‘Yes, Mrs O’Neill,’ Wilberson said, sheathing his annoyance, but looking pained as he hurried across the vast foyer and knocked on the dining-room door.

It was only a matter of seconds before Sir Ronald hurried into the library to join her. Paula’s unannounced arrival at nine-thirty in the evening had startled him. But his surprised expression changed to one of concern when he saw her face.

‘You look frightful, Paula! Deathly pale. What on earth is wrong? Are you ill?’

‘No, I’m not, Uncle Ronnie. And I do apologize for bursting in on you like this. But something awful has happened. I’m in serious trouble and I need your help. There could be a takeover bid for Harte’s. I could lose the stores.’

Sir Ronald was thunderstruck. He understood at once that she was not exaggerating. It was not in her character to do so.
‘Excuse me for a moment, Paula. Let me explain to my dinner guests that I have an emergency, and ask Michael to hold the fort for a while, I’ll be right back.’

‘Thank you, Uncle Ronnie,’ she said, and sat down on the leather Chesterfield sofa.

When he returned almost immediately he took a seat opposite her. ‘Begin at the beginning, Paula, and don’t leave anything out,’ he instructed.

Slowly, precisely, with her usual attention to detail she told him everything that had happened that day. She had a prodigious memory, was able to repeat every conversation verbatim. She started with Charles Rossiter’s phone call to her, and finished with her confrontation with Jonathan Ainsley at the bank.

Sir Ronald had been listening to her attentively, his chin resting on his hand, nodding from time to time. When she had finally finished, given him all the facts, he exclaimed angrily, ‘My father had a name for a man like Jonathan Ainsley!’ He paused, levelled his gaze at her, pronounced with contempt, ‘A
gonif.’

‘Yes, he
is
the biggest thief alive.’ Paula cleared her throat. ‘But actually, I’ve only got myself to blame. I set myself up for the likes of him.’ She sighed, shook her head. ‘I forgot that Harte’s is a public company, forgot that I had stockholders. I believed it was mine, believed that no one would ever challenge me. I was over-confident. Relaxed in too many ways. And that’s always when the sharp knives come out, isn’t it?’

He gave a slight nod, sat scrutinizing her closely. He loved her like a daughter, admired and respected her more than anyone he knew. She was daring, brilliant and intuitive in business. It had taken a lot of guts to say what she had just said, to admit her mistakes. Nevertheless, he had been stunned at the outset of their conversation, when she had told him she had liquidated some of her Harte stock. It had been an error of the worst magnitude.

‘I’ll never understand why you sold that ten per cent, Paula,’ he found himself saying sharply. ‘Never, as long as I live. Very flawed judgement on your part.’

She looked down at her hands, fiddled with her wedding ring. When she finally looked up at him, she gave him a faint smile of chagrin. ‘I know. But I wanted to buy a chain of stores with my own money…So that it would really be mine.’

‘Your ego got in the way.’ ‘That’s true.’

Sir Ronald exhaled heavily, adopted a softer tone. ‘But then nobody’s infallible, Paula, least of all business executives like us. People seem to think that we’re cut from a different cloth, that we’re a special breed, with immunity from human frailties. They think we must be hard-headed, passionless, without any weaknesses, to be able to wheel and deal, make fortunes the way we do. But none of it’s true.’ He shook his head, finished, ‘In your case, some sort of genuine emotional need got in your way. And it distracted you.’

‘I think I had to prove something to myself.’

A costly way of doing it, he thought, but said, ‘Recriminations and regrets are a waste of valuable time. We must turn disadvantage to advantage, make certain you come out the winner. Let’s examine your options.’

She nodded. His words reinforced her own attitude, which had grown more positive since she had been with him. ‘I could go and see Arthur Jackson, at Jackson, Coombe and Barbour, appeal to his better instincts, get him to reverse his decision to vote the shares he controls with Jonathan’s,’ she said. ‘I might even be able to find out what inducement Jonathan used, come up with a –’

‘Telephone Jackson by all means,’ Sir Ronald interrupted. ‘But don’t be surprised if he turns a deaf ear. He’s not beholden to you, and he doesn’t have to tell you anything.’

‘Uncle Ronnie, he’s behaved unethically!’

‘It may seem that way, but it’s not necessarily so. Arthur Jackson is the executor of Sam Weston’s estate. He has only one obligation. To those children whose interests he protects. If he can strike a lucrative deal, or make additional income for them, he will.’

‘I think that’s what he’s done with Jonathan, don’t you?’

‘Most likely. Ainsley’s always been a shrewd operator. He’s probably offered to pay a big cash dividend out of his own pocket to the Weston estate, as long as the law firm vote the stock they control with his.’ Sir Ronald rubbed his chin, pursed his lips, ruminated. Then he added, ‘I’ll do a little fishing tomorrow. I have ways and means of finding things out. There are no secrets in our world, you know. Hold off on your phone call to Arthur Jackson for the moment.’

‘Yes, I will. Thanks, Uncle Ronnie.’ She leaned forward eagerly. ‘Is there any reason why I can’t launch a bid to take Harte’s private? Buy out my stockholders?’

‘Yes, one very good reason. I won’t let you.’

‘But it
would
be legal?’

‘It would. But to take your company private, you would have to offer money publicly, in the open market, to your stockholders. And you would immediately expose yourself to every predator and corporate raider in the City and in Wall Street.’ He shook his head with great vehemence. ‘No, no, I won’t permit you to do that, Paula. There would be other takeover bids, possibly hostile ones. And anyway why should your stockholders take your money? They may prefer to take Sir Jimmy Goldsmith’s money or Sir James Hanson’s or Carl Icahn’s or Tiny Rowland’s…or
Jonathan Ainsley’s.
You’d all be bidding against each other, accomplishing nothing except pushing up the price of the shares.’

Her face changed ever so slightly and she glanced away, biting her lip. After a moment she looked at him and asked in a tired voice, ‘Then what
can
I do, Uncle Ronnie?’

‘You can start looking for a few small stockholders who
between them hold ten per cent of the Harte shares. Perhaps four or five, maybe even as many as twelve. Track them down, buy them out – at a premium, if necessary. You’ve already got forty-one per cent. You only need fifty-one to have control.’

‘God, I’m so stupid, Uncle Ronnie! What’s wrong with me tonight? I keep losing sight of things. Obviously I’m not thinking straight.’

‘That’s understandable, you’ve had a nasty shock. Also –’ He paused thoughtfully before saying, ‘I think there’s one other thing you
must
do, my dear.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You must dispose of Jonathan Ainsley.’ She looked at him.
‘How?
’

‘I don’t know at this moment.’ Sir Ronald pushed himself to his feet, walked over to the window, stood staring out into Eaton Square, his analytical mind examining various possibilities. Eventually he swung around. ‘What do we know about this
gonif?’

‘Not much, I’m afraid, since he left England and went to live in Hong Kong.’

‘Hong Kong!
So that’s where he ended up after Alexander turfed him out. A very
interesting
place, Hong Kong. Now, tell me what little you do know.’

Paula did as he asked, repeating the information Charles Rossiter had given her, which he, in turn, had learned from Sir Logan Curtis.

‘Start digging, Paula,’ Sir Ronald told her, ‘And dig deep. Do you have a particular private investigating firm you use for business matters? If you don’t, I can recommend one.’

‘No, that’s all right, thanks. I use Figg International, and have for years. They handle all of my security at the stores, provide guards, you know, the usual thing. They happen to have a private investigating division with offices and agents all over the world.’

‘Good. Hire them immediately. A
momzer
like Jonathan Ainsley must have more than one skeleton in his closet – ‘ Sir Ronald bit off the end of his sentence when the library door flew open.

Michael walked in, and when he saw Paula he exclaimed, with a laugh, ‘Oho, so
you’re
the emergency!’ Instantly, he realized how serious Paula and his father were, and continued in a more sober tone, ‘From the way you both look, it
must
be an emergency.’ His eyes rested on Paula. He took in her extreme pallor, her tired eyes. ‘What’s wrong? It’s not something to do with the fire in Sydney, Paula, is it?’

‘No, Michael, it’s not,’ Paula said quietly, then glanced across at his father.

Sir Ronald said, ‘Jonathan Ainsley has returned; he’s in London. To make trouble for Paula.’

‘How can he do that?’ Michael demanded, turning to her, frowning, his eyes full of puzzlement.

‘Uncle Ronnie will explain.’

Once his father had acquainted him with the facts, Michael went to sit next to Paula on the sofa. He took hold of her hand affectionately. ‘Dad’s made some excellent suggestions, but what can
I
do to help you?’ he asked. He was full of sympathy and worry for her.

‘I honestly don’t know, Michael, but thanks for offering. Right now I’m going back to the store. I must start checking the records, go over the computer printouts. I must find those crucial stockholders. And as fast as possible.’