Special Relationship (5 page)

What the hell does it mean, and who sent it? she thought.

She got out of bed, made some tea and read the message again. It was still there, she hadn't been dreaming.

Who sent it...
Tavis, Katherine, the drunk woman? It couldn't be the Lord or Lady, she figured, as they belonged to the pre-internet era. Maybe it was Nick himself she considered, maybe some kind of joke. Or someone else from the company she had yet to meet.

She returned to bed and turned her radio to the World Service but barely listened. Her mind was busy wondering not only who sent the text but why it was sent and, perhaps most importantly, why she should be wary of Nick
Hensen.

The doorbell rang at
8.15 am. The Sunday Times being too big to fit through the letter box, Alex regularly tipped the paper boy to signal to her when he had dropped it outside.

She got out of bed and went to the kitchen to make coffee and toast. Her first thought was that she felt quite hungover, her second was the message from the night before.

Pouring the coffee, she decided that telling Nick about the text would be a mistake since the sender might be genuinely trying to warn her about something. Telling him might even even put her contract at risk. But what might the 'something' be?

She sipped coffee as she went to the front door to collect the newspaper. "Bankers face new government inquiry," the headline ran. Oh joy, she thought.

Back in the bedroom, she ate the toast, dropping crumbs on the white cotton sheets, and read the paper, quickly giving up the news section for fashion. What to wear for my meeting with Nick, even if he is a man who needs treating with caution, she wondered.

Then, after considering an expensive Burberry dress, she grabbed her laptop to Google Nick
Hensen and find out what she could. Curiosity killed the cat, she worried.

She already knew he was not married. Someone at the pitch for her contract had described him as "Britain's most eligible
bachelor".

Under Personal Life
in Wikipedia, Alex read:

He stated in an interview with the Financial Times that he and a former partner, the dancer Claire Westwood, had a daughter named Chloe who died when she was just six days old in 2005.

His relationship with Ms Westwood, now married to John Evans, the lead singer of rock band Hounded, ended one year later.

Hensen
has been linked with several celebrities in tabloid newspapers, including the English film star Jennifer Hutton and the Swedish singer Annalina Engman, but has never married.

In The Sunday Times Rich List
Hensen was ranked as the 41st wealthiest man in Britain with a fortune of £505 million. Wow, she thought.

She almost pressed the back button to look for more on him but instead clicked the 'X' on her browser window and returned to the fashion in the paper. Buffeting around in the back of her mind, was the reason she quit the search - that she was scared of what she might find.

It's the internet. Anyone can write anything about anyone, she decided. Best to find out in real life.

Then, having looked at a picture of a Jimmy
Choo handbag at nearly a month's salary of what she was paying herself - she had another change of mind. She called one of her three employees, computer geek, Adrian Wilson.

"Ade, sorry to trouble you on a Sunday, and this early too, but I need a favour."

"Go on," he grumbled having been awoken by her call.

"I've got a meeting with Nick
Hensen in the week about that contract we won. I know it is not really in your remit but would you mind digging up some stuff on him, so that...you know...I don't look too much out my depth?"

He turned in his bed. "What time is it... yeah, no
probs...I've got a program for that, people search, bios, newspaper comments, recent news, Facebook, Twitter, all social networks...it'll grab everything in a few minutes.

"I'll have something on your desk tomorrow."

"Oh, OK, thanks," she said. "I didn't realise it was that easy. Ade, I'll see you tomorrow. It's nine by the way. Time you were up."

"Cheers Alex," said Adrian with sarcasm before he hung up.

The problem was whether she actually wanted to read what his program discovered. She decided a run might clear her mind. Shoreditch to Tower Bridge a couple of miles, grab a coffee, then back to start on the Hensen stuff.

After twenty minutes reading film and book reviews, she got into her shorts, trainers and, with the sun already strong, the lightest T-shirt she had.

Soon, she was running past Spitalfields, licensed for the sale of "flesh, fowl and roots" by Charles I in the 17
th
century, and now a trendy mix of restaurants, antique stalls and contemporary shops. She loved wandering through the market but overcame the temptation to stop. Burn those calories from all that food and drink yesterday, she told herself.

Even that early on a Sunday there were plenty of people around. Just half a mile away was Petticoat Lane where throughout the years Huguenots, Jews and,
now, Asians have in turn sold clothes, jewellery and trinkets to London's east enders. Most of the goods sold there were what Londoners would call 'cheap and cheerful'. Not Nick Hensen's stomping ground, she thought.

She jogged on, into Middlesex Street,
Botolph Street, Mansell Street and then St Katherines Way, by the Tower of London, and, skipping past the tourists, arrived at the Dock.

She ordered an iced coffee and walked to the riverside where she looked across the Thames to the glistening 72-storey Shard. Then, still guilty about her excesses of the previous day, she decided to jog farther, into Wapping before coming back the same route for a round journey of about six miles.

Well done, she thought as she put the key into the front door. A quick shower and down to work.

Draped in a white towel, with another round her head, she opened the
Hensen Fund Management file and turned to the pages of what was expected of her company. She'd seen them scores of times in the last couple of weeks but was determined that nothing would go wrong.

She also decided to get the text message out of her mind, and simply do the job as professionally as possible. For that, she needed to speak to Adrian who now was having Sunday lunch with his girlfriend.

"Ade, I'm so sorry to trouble you again, I just wanted to check that on the data side we have everything ready for Hensen."

"Alex, will you stop worrying. Everything is set up and whatever they want from the data that's listed in the contract can be provided straight away. We can even stream everything to them in real time and they can pick and choose what they want.

"It's easy, I'm just surprised they are paying us so much."

"Well, it's not that much," she said. "Just enough to get us into profit and the bank off our backs."

"Contract winning is up to you and Kerry...I'm just the boring geek who sits in front of a computer all day and from where I am everything is all systems go."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, I am sure. Stop worrying."

She could hear him ordering a pint of some old world ale that she wouldn't consider drinking herself and his partner asking him who was on the phone, so decided it was time to end the call.

"Ade, have a good day, I'll talk to you tomorrow."

Kerry, Kerry, Kerry...she thought and hit the
speed dial on her mobile.

"Hiya," she answered.

"Hi hon, how's it going?"

Kerry Turner had begun working at Anderson Financial on a pay-per-day basis three years earlier but with the workload growing she was now a full-time employee and a fifteen per cent shareholder, a stake mainly built up in lieu of unpaid work.

She was five years younger than Alex and a bright and bubbly redhead with a big smile and a heart of gold, and one of those people for whom defeat was never an option. Even a long battle with her weight since the birth of her son she'd all but won after a series of trying every fad diet the corporate world could offer.

Alex told her about her day at the races, of Nick
Hensen, Katherine and Tavis, the Lord and Lady, and the celebration drinks in Park Lane. And then of the text message she had received in the middle of the night.

"But how'd they get your number, babe?" she asked in her accent of a working-class, cockney Londoner, which Alex decided was the London equivalent of
Brooklynese.

"Well, I have been racking my brains. I guess anyone at the company could have it. We left them with all our contact details after the pitch.

"Tavis is a really interesting man, and we said we'd meet up for drinks...I mean, he is married and everything and old enough to be my father, but he does work for Hensen and I really like him, only for his conversation, of course, and, well, because he was quite good fun

"But I don't actually think it was him, even though he did seem a bit suspicious of my past. Whoever sent the message could have done so during the day, not in the middle of the night. And he just doesn't strike me as the type who would do such a thing. I mean, sending a cryptic text in the middle of the night seems a bit
school boyish. He just seems...well...above all that."

"Ah, but if not him, then who?" Kerry asked with
Shakespearian rhythm.

"There was a girl there who was quite drunk, even more than the rest of us. She used to work for
Hensen but doesn't anymore, so I don't know how she would have got my number. She'd still be my prime suspect because I think something went on with her and Nick Hensen.

"But it might not have been anyone at
Hensen at all. Maybe one of our competitors, or someone who for whatever reason doesn't like us dealing with the company."

"Bit scary for you, though, darling," Kerry said. "Do you want me to come over?"

"No, I'm fine. It did freak me out a little, but as you know I've been through worse."

"Oh babe, don't even go there," Kerry replied.

"Why don't we catch a film. Luke is here, with loads of sport to watch on telly. He'll look after Ollie," she added.

"Love to, but I want to do some work, make sure I come out flying with the
Hensen stuff."

The two of them talked for a few minutes more. Kerry made Alex promise that she would call night or day if she got another scary text. Alex agreed and they decided they'd treat themselves to a good lunch the next day.

Mind still muddled, she went back to the Sunday Times, now the business section. Keeping an eye on what was happening with the big players, like Hensen and his chums, might provide some worthwhile knowledge for the forthcoming meeting. While she read, she couldn't help but wonder  how much she really knew about them and, more importantly, what they might know about her.

According to the paper, t
he pound was falling, the yen was steady and the gold price was going up. Unemployment was rising and the Bank of England was considering more "quantitative easing".

How does that work, she thought. The Bank prints money but who does it give it to?

Shortly, she switched on her iPad, put 'The Best of Mozart' on repeat, and returned to the Hensen folder, full of papers that outlined what was expected of them. Nothing seemed too exacting.

Le
Nozze Di Fiagro Overture was playing in her earphones when her mobile on the desk vibrated and lit up. It was Tavis, whose number she had saved.

She at first thought of rejecting the call but then pulled out her earphones and put the phone on speaker.

"Hi Tavis," she answered.

"Alex, lovely to meet you yesterday, hope you don't mind me calling, just wanting to check you got home safely after our boozy day and whether I could help you with anything?"

"Oh, thanks. I have just been going through the files. I'm pretty sure everything is good.

"Are you actually working for Nick on our stuff?"

"Oh no, I'm doing work for him at present but your contract is not my department. Just wanted to know if I could provide any assistance, free of charge of course," he chuckled.

"There was just one thing..." Alex started and then stopped herself abruptly.

"What's that?" asked Tavis.

"Oh, no nothing, it was just something with the numbers but I'll get someone in the office to sort them out.

"How about you, did you get home before the sun came up, and hopefully not in trouble with Mrs Tavis?"

He laughed. "She knows me by now. I have my weaknesses, whisky being one and the habit of staying out later than I should, but she is a gem."

She was thinking of how she could glean something from Tavis that might help her with the contract or the curious text message, but without asking any questions that would sound too obvious.

"Nick must have really enjoyed the day yesterday, with his horse winning and everything."

"Yep, like a kid in a candy store.