Conflict of Interest

‘It’s caused an uproar downstairs. There’s been a circus down there with people cancelling flights and rescheduling meetings, you name it.’

Chris was curious. ‘Mike would have known the inconvenience … must be really important.’ Then, after a pause, ‘You said you went to one before?’

She nodded. ‘Must have been about two years ago, just after I’d joined.’

‘What was that one about?’

‘You know Lombard used to have the IGO account?’

Chris rolled his eyes. IGO was one of the world’s largest chemical manufacturers, and a British company. For years it had cultivated an environmentally friendly image – a ‘greenwashing’ job in which Lombard had played a key role. But then, a Government-commissioned report had shown that not only were IGO’s green credentials decidedly suspect, it was actually the country’s worst polluter. IGO had reacted swiftly, promising to clean up any of its plants that had fallen short of its own stringent standards, etcetera, etcetera – but the damage had been done. A genuine clean-up would have cost more than IGO’s shareholders were prepared to stomach, so it was never going to happen. The company was fighting a PR battle that was impossible to win and had become an embarrassment to Lombard. Associating with a company whose credibility was so irreparably damaged was bad for Lombard’s own image. So, despite a monthly retainer which was in the generous six figures, Lombard had resigned the account.

‘Mike announced that we were resigning IGO. It was a big shock – we had a lot of people who were working on IGO full-time. He did his best to calm nerves, you know, tell people there would be no redundancies, that kind of thing. At the same time that he was telling us, the announcement went out on the stock exchange – it knocked fifty pence off IGO’s share price.’

Chris suddenly felt the muscles in his face relax. ‘Very interesting.’ Would Friday morning’s meeting also be a client resignation announcement? If Kate had shown Mike the Ultra-Sports and Trimnasium accounts, maybe he now felt the same way about representing Jacob Strauss as he had about IGO. He turned and began making his way back into his office.

‘By the way, did Kate catch you?’ Charlotte called after him.

He shook his head.

‘She wanted to see you. Had just been in with Mike, but you were away from your desk. Seemed important.’

Broadgate Circle is the City of London’s answer to New York’s Rockefeller Plaza – minus the flags. An ice-rink in winter, during the summer months the skating circle is covered over and used for displays and performances, from jazz bands to croquet. Overlooking it, in restaurants and wine bars, City suits enjoy the entertainment as they pitch for business, shake on deals, or simply catch up on the latest gossip. In Corney & Barrow wine bar, Kate Taylor was having a Thursday pre-lunch-time spritzer with Patrick O’Neill of J. P. Morgan. Patrick was an analyst who followed media companies, and Kate had known him for a couple of years and often spoke to him about her media industry clients. Large, curly-haired, with a Limerick lilt, Patrick had always seemed more publican than analyst; Kate tried not to let his appearance distract her from his incisive mind. She’d set up today’s meeting ostensibly to discuss the latest interim results of United Magazines – but their conversation would, of course, be far more broad-ranging.

Apart from their professional contact, they had met socially a few times with Patrick’s late colleague, Merlin de Vere. In fact, it was Merlin who had introduced them. The last time they’d seen each other had been at Merlin’s funeral. The J. P. Morgan team had been well-represented, and had included several of the company’s top brass. There could have been no clearer signal, thought Kate, of the high regard in which Merlin had been held by his colleagues – however bizarre the circumstances of his death. Now Kate asked, ‘Tell me Pat, I know Tim Packard is holding the fort at Morgan’s on the manufacturing side, for now, but do you know what’s happening to Merlin’s remit?’

‘There’s been some interviewing going on.’ He swigged his Guinness. ‘But I don’t know for sure. The golden hellos are getting pretty steep.’

Luring potential employees had always been a pricey business in the City – especially at a senior level. Merchant banks regularly churned out million-pound ‘golden hellos’ just to get signatures on the dotted line. That was before the generous seven-figure salary, and even more generous bonus structures.

‘Going to be hard to replace,’ Kate responded.

‘To be honest,’ his expression was serious, ‘we’re all still recovering from the shock.’

There was a pause as they both looked out of the window, gazing out, unseeing, at the putt-putt competition currently in progress down in the circle.

‘It was a very strange business,’ she mused. ‘I’m still trying to get my head around it. Just seemed so completely unlike him.’

Conversation was moving towards the real reason she’d set up today’s meeting. She had been well aware, at the time of Merlin’s death, that a conspiracy theory was doing the rounds: something to the effect that his death was murder, not accidental suicide. At the time, she hadn’t paid it too much attention. Under the circumstances, she reckoned, it was to be expected that stories of that kind would circulate; none of Merlin’s friends wanted to believe he was some kind of sicko pervert. She hadn’t even wanted to think about how he’d died. In fact, she’d tried to put the whole thing out of her mind.

It was after Chris Treiger had shown her the documents on Ultra Sports and Trimnasium that an alarm had sounded. Sitting in her office, going through the accounts, she had suddenly remembered her last telephone conversation with Merlin. It was a call she’d replayed in her mind many times since his death, wondering about the significance of it. They had been arranging to meet the following week. But what made the arrangement different was that Merlin had phoned her to set up the meeting. Usually she, as the PR person, called him to arrange things. And something else was odd too – the reason he gave her, over the phone, for wanting to meet: ‘There’s something really quite important I need to speak to you about. Serious implications. I’d rather do it face to face.’

Now that she knew the truth of Jacob Strauss’s disastrous business past, and knew, also, just how desperate Elliott North was to suppress any suggestion of it, Kate was struck by the horrifying possibility: what if it was Jacob Strauss that Merlin had wanted to discuss with her? What if he, like Chris Treiger, had decided to investigate Jacob’s track record – only to discover the same can of worms? And what if Elliott North had got to him first?

It was at that point that she decided to do some asking around for herself – starting with Patrick. Meeting his eyes now, she asked, ‘Is the conspiracy theory still doing the rounds?’

‘You know, the thing about conspiracy theories is they usually die down after a while. But this one just keeps going down new avenues.’

‘Oh?’

‘When it first came out it was all circumstantial. It had to do with things down in Merlin’s cottage not being quite right. He’d put red wine in the fridge; he’d forgotten to wind a clock. But no one can build a case on that.’

She nodded, grimly.

‘Now the story is that Merlin knew too much.’

Her heart quickened. ‘About?’

‘Some skeleton in a corporate closet. He’d been digging around and uncovered something.’