Conflict of Interest

‘Photographs in The Herald!’ He thumped the counter with feeling. ‘Bring down the oppressors!’

‘It’d be better if you don’t mention The Herald, at the moment,’ she cautioned. ‘Just say a national newspaper.’

‘Of course. “A national newspaper.” Sports clothes. You know, if I find many people I will arrange a meeting for you.’ His eyes glowed with excitement. ‘My brother-in-law has a place in Southfields. There is a big lounge, very, very big. It holds a lot of people. I could bring them all there for you to meet.’

‘That would be wonderful,’ Judith encouraged him. She’d never asked Sanjay to do anything like this before and it was all very spur of the moment. But he’d always been supportive and asking him seemed to make sense.

‘How soon do you think you could make a few enquiries?’

Sanjay regarded her brightly, before leaning down to retrieve a telephone from under the counter, and placing it in front of him with a jangle. ‘Stop by tomorrow morning on your way to work,’ he told her importantly. ‘I have news for you by then.’

Chris stepped out of his front door, locked it shut behind him, and began walking swiftly along the pavement. It was a pleasant evening for a walk and he could do with the exercise. He glanced at his watch. Just after nine. That meant just after four in New York. With any luck Rick Kane would have found something for him. With any luck, when he got to Bernie’s, he would find a fax waiting for him – and the truth about Jacob Strauss’s management of Ultra-Sports and Trimnasium.

He listened for footsteps behind him, but there were none. He was tempted to turn round to look behind, or to step into an alley and wait. Just to check. To see what they looked like. But for the hundredth time in the past twenty-four hours he warned himself not to do anything so bloody stupid. He couldn’t afford to let them know he knew. He had to act normally.

As he strode along under the streetlights, his thoughts kept turning to ‘them’. Not the spooks on the ground, but the people operating them. Was it the likes of North’s private dick, Kuczynski, who was tracking his movements, he wondered? Kuczynski, supposedly so adept at ‘digging up dirt’, but from whom he hadn’t yet heard. Not that he really cared.

Mike Cullen’s response to Project Silo had, as he’d expected, been very different from North’s. Mike had congratulated him on an incisive and comprehensive report – ‘ground breaking’ was the word he’d used. He’d left Chris in no doubt that he’d earned his spurs with Project Silo, proved himself more than equal to his new role. When Chris had told him about North’s reaction to the report, Cullen had been taken aback. When he’d mentioned Kuczynski, Cullen had been visibly perturbed. There was no way, he instructed Chris, that Project Silo was to be rewritten on the basis of what some corporate spiv might uncover. Ever the pragmatist, he had suggested, though, that whatever Kuczynski came up with might be included as an appendix to the report – to keep North, and more importantly, Jacob Strauss, happy. It was a difficult ‘bedding-down’ period the agency was going through with North and Strauss, he’d told Chris. He hadn’t had to say more, Chris could read between the lines; Cullen obviously had his own concerns about North and his ultimate paymaster.

Now he stood, waiting for some cars to go by before crossing the street. It had been Trisha’s idea that he went round for supper. Late last night, after his calls to Judith and the security company, she’d suggested he drop in the next day after work. Bernie was never home before eight anyway – they could have a meal together. He’d told them his suspicions about his flat. Advance Security had promised to undertake a discreet, electronic sweep of the place later in the week – until he’d had the report on that, he had no intention of using his own phone for anything other than innocuous social calls. Stopping at a Threshers shop, he bought two bottles of claret before continuing the short distance up Bernie’s street.

Trisha greeted him at the door. ‘Anyone behind you you’d like to invite?’ she enquired, as they kissed.

He pulled a droll smile. ‘Don’t know and don’t want to know,’ he replied.

She waved him through to the lounge. ‘You’ve had a long fax from New York,’ she said the magic words, pointing towards the coffee table, where a sheaf of paper and a bowl of nuts was waiting for him. ‘Can I get you a drink while you go through it?’

Chris couldn’t help smiling. ‘All so efficient. I don’t know how Bernie ever managed without you.’

‘He didn’t,’ she said grinning.

‘I’d love a glass of wine.’

After she’d gone through to the kitchen, he was about to sit down before he suddenly remembered. He looked through the uncurtained French doors of the sitting room and into the darkness. There were only the backs of other houses, he told himself. Glancing round at the windows, he noted the other curtains were all drawn. Sitting down, he picked up the fax, with its familiar KB cover page.

‘Had to use weasel words to get there,’ Rick had scribbled on the front. ‘Who would have thought our great sporting hero was such a crook? Happy hunting.’

Quickly turning over the pages, he was soon completely absorbed in the accounts of the Ultra-Sports chain of shops and Trimnasium home gym equipment, the much-vaunted success stories of Jacob Strauss’s pre-Starwear career. Page after page of the accounts of the two companies showed that, far from being massively profitable, Ultra-Sports had actually been on the verge of bankruptcy when it was sold off, and Trimnasium would have gone the same way had it not been for the repeated influx of large sums of cash – ‘irregular’ was hardly the word for it.

It was the first concrete proof that Judith had been right about Jacob Strauss’s business record. Even though Chris had been prepared for sets of accounts that were less than straightforward, these exceeded his most perverse expectations. Was this the information Merlin de Vere had uncovered? The reason William van Aardt had been silenced? Was this the reality Elliott North was so desperate to conceal?

Bernie arrived not long after, and Trisha produced a curry with all the side dishes. Curry was usually one of Chris’s favourites, but tonight he was distracted: there was too much to think about; it was getting late. And despite the company and concern, he’d felt himself feeling suddenly and strangely dislocated; detached from the reality he’d shared with everyone else – until last Saturday night.

He hadn’t long finished

his coffee when he decided he’d better be heading off. Slipping the sheaf of pages down his shirt front, he said his thank yous and goodbyes, and started home. The last time he’d walked this way, he thought, had been with Judith. So much had happened since then that it all seemed an age away. His footsteps on the pavement were solitary in the late-night calm, but he still wasn’t looking behind him.

As he walked, the knowledge he’d just acquired settled over him, a heavy and unexpected burden. And he found himself recalling Mike Cullen’s words during that first briefing at Lombard: You know, of course, there must be no talking shop outside the office. Even the most casual asides are open to misinterpretation. So, it’s best to say absolutely nothing. Not about clients, not about colleagues, not about anything that you do.

But what if you discovered your client was not only a fraudulent businessman, but one who molested little boys from the Catholic orphanage? What if one of your fellow employees bribed, burgled, and murdered to suppress the truth? What if the one person you knew you could trust – the person who’d first alerted you to all of this – was the last person in the world you should be talking to?

15

Kate Taylor was still furious when she arrived at Lombard on Thursday morning. None of The Ivy’s considerable delectations the night before could compensate for Jim Ritchie’s revelations about North. Her position was intolerable; Mike had to do something about it. Dumping briefcase and handbag in her office, she checked through that morning’s stock exchange announcements before taking the lift up to the fourth floor.

Rosa was behind her desk listening to Dictaphone tapes when she arrived. Mike was having a breakfast meeting at the Savoy, she explained, but was expected in by nine. He had a nine-thirty meeting to prepare for, she continued, then, seeing Kate’s expression, she promised to phone down the moment he got in.

Heading back for the lifts, Kate passed Chris’s office. Glancing in, she saw him behind his desk, surrounded by papers. ‘Hard at it?’ she greeted him.