Connections (7 page)

“Mm,” was all she trusted herself to say.

“Not good enough for you then?” he mumbled.

Did he mean him, himself, or his situation and the place? She knew the answers – yes, he was good enough, more than good enough – and no, his life wouldn't do. She only said, “Own bed – get some sleep. See you soon.”

He muttered something and went straight back to sleep. She let herself out into the grey day, with light just coming.

Dear William,

I hope you don't mind me calling you William. Or would you rather I used the whole thing: Sir William Clegg, Chairman and Treasury Representative for the Bank of England Enquiry? I think we were at Downside together, though you must have been four years younger. You've done well, William. You always did, from what I heard, and here you are now, investigating me. Or anyway, you've issued an invitation for me to give evidence at the Bank's Enquiry into the affairs of Strauss Jethro Smith.

I seem to remember a chubby face and a pure soprano voice hitting the chapel rafters while – what was I doing? Thinking about girls, planning an escape route, working out the day's punishment plan for whoever I was bullying at the time?

You've done well, William – twenty-five years later here you are chairing the committee, while I'm sitting here looking out over the wintry sea from my small hotel on the coast. I'm watching an old man in a trilby walking his dog over the wet sand under a moving black and grey sky. It all seems quintessentially English – out-of-season, sea-surrounded, misty-aired English.

This communication of mine will put you in a bit of a quandary, I imagine. It will come to you as a private letter, through your own front door. As such, technically, it will be your private property. You'll be under no legal compulsion to disclose what I'm telling you, though you might think there's a moral one. Not that I'm one to preach morality to my betters. William Clegg – the choice is yours.

Background first – you need to know who it is you're dealing
with, who's taking you down roads that you'll wish, before it's over, you'd never started walking on.

Who am I? My name, your Honour, is Sam Hope, and I come from a respectable home; not poor, but honest servants of State and Empire over many generations. I'm ex-army and took a hike in the early eighties, after the Falklands war. I joined up with John Vansittart, who was ex-army himself and had a small private security company. I recruited my own small corps from the British Army, SAS and elsewhere. We'd stand on the airstrip, me and the lads, ready for Africa, the Balkans or wherever, and when I looked at them the words of the Duke of Wellington reviewing his own troops before Waterloo would ring in my ears – “I don't know what they'll do to the enemy, but by God, they terrify me.
”

By the later eighties Hope Vansittart Private Security was on covert missions, not abroad but over here, helping to persuade the doughty colliers of the Midlands to set up their own union in opposition to Scar gill's NUM and up north helping the other pitmen to give up their obstinate ways. Previously we'd been guarding oil sheikhs and film stars, and dictators with good reason to fear their own dissident groups. Then there we were in GB, making life a misery for the miners.

This was how Hope Vansittart Private Security – HVPS – came into what you might describe as politics. Funny, really: it was the Falklands that got me out of the army and the miners' strike which put me on the path to the best part of my fortune. Ultimately, you might say, the Lady made me.

Since then, William, I've been a non-attributable resource, buried deep in your firm's books. Thus the private schools for my children, the big house in Twickenham with the Thames running sweetly at the end of my garden, the blonde-streaked wife with the discontented expression called, as you might guess, Fiona. I met her at Vansittart's third wedding. After that one, unable to face any more alimony, he fled. He now lives elsewhere, drawing his dividends via the Turks and Caicos Islands. Even if you could find him he couldn't give you any help. He's been out of the business for ten years.

Anyway there was I, five years ago when this affair started,
MD of HVPS, charming wife, two adorable blonde kiddies, nice house and, as far as family and neighbours were concerned, the model of respectability.

I had a small factory near Preston which made the security equipment. It was a cover to disguise the other parts of my work, of course, and handy for filtering through unusual sums of money. It's a major problem of our times, isn't it, William? Not how to get hold of the money, but how to explain it afterwards.

Where did it come from, this income of about forty times what your average bus driver will get every year for his nine, ten, eleven, twelve-hour day? Guarding people and property accounted for about a third. The remainder came from my little set-up's work as an NGO – non-governmental organisation, working alongside governments or for them and receiving payment from them. Think of Oxfam or Save the Children. Then think of me, the evil, the unsanctified, the unadmitted NGO.

Think of a place where the native people want to go on leading their simple lives, fishing in the river, hunting and eating the local wildlife, drawing water, cutting wood for the fires, planting crops. Simple, Arcadian, backed by the good NGOs. Then think of a government who wants to mine minerals, uranium, oil and so on, at the same time keeping in with the multinational who will most likely be involved, build some airports, buy some planes and some weapons and put something prudently aside in private accounts in Switzerland. This is where the lads and I come in – hired to make sure life's not worthwhile for the simple indigenes standing in the way of international trade and the personal enrichment of interested parties. I turn up with my boys to go through a few villages at night killing and setting houses on fire, or assassinate the local leaders, or poison the water supply so that people have to roll up their blankets and move on. We do what the job demands.

Or take a little island not far from a bigger one. This island is split into two bits, one small bit owing allegiance to the big island, the other autonomous. Only a lot of people in the small bit want to link up with the autonomous side. And what a mess the place has become. Awash with drugs, arms and money, crammed with

spies, patriots, traitors, infiltrators, collaborators, double – triple – agents. Who do you call on to do some of the dirty work? Good old Sam, rogue-element, never-heard-of-him-before-in-my-life Hope, that's who. I tell you, in the end I didn't know whether I was working for MI5, MI6, the IRA, the Unionists or Che Guevara.

Well, I'd always known it had to end, one way or another. That was why I left bundles of cash in different places. But I must say, although I knew something, sometime, would give, I'm a bit surprised by what it turned out to be. I suppose you always are. To think that stupid little job years ago, done just to oblige and involving three hopeless down-and-outs, could lead to all this – your Enquiry, me having to disappear and all the other consequences. It's a funny old world, and no mistake.

So – now to our muttons, as the slaughterman said
…

Fleur woke up next morning and suddenly remembered she was supposed to let in the man who was going to inspect the wine bar's oven.

There was no noise from the flat next door and as she hastily showered and combed her hair Fleur told herself the night with Dominic had been brought on by the shock of Vanessa's near-death experience. Death and sex were closely linked in the human mind, she told herself, as were fear and sex, food and sex, chocolate and sex. It seemed the only things not connected with sex were Radio Four, matching sets of saucepans, income tax and National Insurance. So that was what it was, she told herself: Dominic's desire for comfort because of Vanessa's being in hospital, and both their horror at someone young being so close to death. That was it, Fleur said to herself. Definitely. She ran across the road to the wine bar.

It was a bad day. A smell of old food, stale drink and tobacco hit her the moment she opened the door. The floor was tacky underfoot, the bar was littered with bottles and unwashed glasses and there was a heap of dirty dishes in the kitchen, too. Even Al hadn't loaded the dishwasher the previous night, as he normally did.

She started clearing up and half an hour later the engineer arrived and declared the gas stove out of action. He put a long warning sticker across it, declaring it unfit for use.

She called Geoff to tell him but he didn't answer so she left a message on his machine. She phoned Mr Housman and left another message, then found Al's number under the bar and called that, too. The extremely posh and very brisk man who
answered the phone told her he was Al's brother and that Al was already on his way to the wine bar.

Al came in not long after. Fleur told him about the oven and they treated themselves to a decent coffee, made from a bag Al had brought in. “I thought it'd be nice,” he told her, “for when we had a moment.”

“We've certainly got a moment now,” Fleur said.

“That's for sure,” he agreed.

“You look rough,” Fleur said.

“I had a hard night,” he said. “You look a bit – different.”

She told him about Vanessa's overdose. He said, “Oh, God, she'll have to pick herself up and start again.”

Fleur looked at him. He sounded as if he knew something about it.

He caught her glance, read her mind and said, “Yeah – well – that's all over now.” Then he added, looking round, “Let's face it, this place is looking about as good as we feel. And Geoff's taking something off the top. There's always more money going out of the till than there ought to be. I haven't seen Housman for weeks, unless he's coming in in the early hours of the morning, like a vampire. If Geoff doesn't turn up by half-past, I'm going to call it a day. I'm used to having nothing to cook but now there's nothing to cook on. It's getting ridiculous.”

At this point Mr Housman came in wearing his long black coat and carrying his briefcase. His square face was sagging. He looked pointedly at Al and Fleur sitting down and at the dustpan and brush Fleur had left on another table.

“What's all this about?” he asked.

“The kitchen stove's broken down. The gas man's condemned it till it's repaired.”

“Where's Geoff?” Housman asked.

“I don't know,” Al told him. “Fleur's left a message on his answering machine.”

“You could use the microwave for the cooking,” Housman said, and, looking at Fleur, added, “and you could get the place looking tidy.”

“When you took me on there was a cleaner here,” Fleur pointed out.

Housman stood in the middle of the floor, still holding his briefcase. He looked angrily at Al and Fleur. “I don't pay you to sit down drinking coffee.”

Fleur spoke up. “Mr Housman,” she said, “this place does make money. But we're always operating on a shoestring. It wastes time and it's more expensive.”

Housman responded predictably. “Leave the management to me and get a broom and do your job.” Fleur didn't move.

Housman glared at her, opened his briefcase, took out a mobile phone and went over to the bar. He pulled out a big bunch of labelled keys, opened one till and stared inside expressionlessly. He slammed it shut and opened the other. His face hardened. He glared at Al.

“Where's the cash?” he demanded.

“Geoff must have taken it,” Al said.

“Did you see him?” asked Housman. His eyes went suspiciously from Al to Fleur and back.

“He was still here when I left last night,” said Al. “He told me to go early. And Fleur was off. Look, Mr Housman, if anything's missing would I be sitting here now?”

“You might or you might not,” Housman said.

“Perhaps he decided to clear the till at night and take the money to the bank early,” Al commented.

Housman just stood glaring at him.

“Did he take the cheques?” Al continued.

Housman hesitated and finally answered, “No. He hasn't.”

A fly buzzed. Al coughed and pulled a tin from the pocket of his white jacket. He opened it and started to roll a cigarette.

No one liked to. point out that if Geoff had been going to pay the takings into the bank he would have taken the cheques as well.

Housman went behind the bar and called the bank, asking when the last payment had been made in to the wine bar's account. The answer evidently gave him no comfort. Meanwhile he continued to eye Al and Fleur as if they had done something wrong, but
he didn't know what it was. He then called another number and left a message for Geoff to ring him urgently.

“What do you know about this?” he said harshly to Fleur and Al.

Al stood up. “Mr Housman,” he said, “I'm not too happy about standing here and listening to you accusing—”

“What have I accused you of?” demanded Housman. “Don't tell me I'm making accusations.”

“You want to, though,” said Al. “So – Geoff paid me before I left so I don't owe you anything and you don't owe me anything, so as from this moment I don't work for you any more.”

Fleur stood up, too. “And neither do I,” she told Housman.

Al went into the kitchen to get his odds and ends while Fleur waited awkwardly and Housman stood there, not looking at her.

“Fancy a swift half in the Findhorn?” Al asked her once they were outside.

Fleur shrugged. “Why not?”

Patrick was only just opening up as they arrived. “What happened?” he asked.

Al outlined the situation at the wine bar and Patrick laughed. “There'll be a rush here at lunchtime,” he predicted. Giving them their drinks, he added, “I always thought that Geoff looked dodgy.”