share at its current market value, which, as there is no market, is decided by a small committee known as the Prop, which is short for Proportionality. You still with me?'
'I was till this last bit,' said Joe.
'Do pay attention. The intention is that new members should be chosen for their clubability not their wealth, and charged not on a fixed scale but according to what they can afford to pay.'
'Got you!' said Joe. 'You mean like if I got elected, they'd say, Welcome aboard, Joe, you're such a nice guy we really want you here at the Hoo. Here's your membership share, that will be a fiver please. Whereas if Sir Monty Wright had got elected it would have cost him half a mill maybe.'
'You're doing well,' said Butcher approvingly. 'But don't get your hopes up; there's an annual fee that you could probably afford, only you wouldn't be able to eat, drink, pay your rent, or buy new clothes, which in your case might not be such a bad thing.'
'You ain't no fashion plate yourself,' retorted Joe. 'So OK, everything's neat and tidy, that what you got me here to tell?'
'More or less. But what one lawyer puts away neat and tidy another lawyer can usually find a way to muss up, if he or she puts her mind to it. If at any time there should be more than four membership shares floating around this pool-because, say, the Almighty decided He'd had enough of these privileged prats sunning themselves on their exclusive terrace and took a lot of them out with one of His thunderbolts-in that case members are allowed to buy extra shares which they can hold in trust for any future member they themselves may care to propose, the advantage of this being that in such a case such a proposition would be decided by simple majority without option of blackball.'
'Now I'm starting to hurt,' said Joe. 'Why?'
'To keep numbers up, I suspect. And also because grandpapa Porphyry didn't trust his friends not to become such a complacent, snobbish, coterie-forming bunch of twats that they'd end up blackballing the club out of existence.'
'Butcher, I got a plane to catch,' said Joe looking at his watch. 'And if I don't catch it, I'm going to have to explain myself to King Rat. I'm already running late, so can we cut to the chase here?'
'OK. Termination of membership. Possible reasons: death, resignation, expulsion. In each and all of these cases, the membership shares go into the pool. Possible reasons for expulsion: anything that in the judgment of the Committee is deemed to have brought the club into disrepute. So, a judgment call, except in one particular instance. There is one crime regarded as heinous beyond all mitigation of circumstance or misfortune. If a man is found to have cheated at golf, the penalty is instant expulsion, without debate or appeal.'
Finally Joe was starting to see where Butcher was going.
'So if Mr. Porphyry was found guilty, he'd be chucked out and his shares would go into this pool thing? But I mean, it's his club, or at least it's his family's club-'
'Wrong,' said Butcher. 'The club belongs to the shareholders who are the members. The fact that there is a majority shareholder who calls the shots is immaterial. This is where Granpapa Porphyry's neat and tidy arrangements fall down. I'm sure he was sufficiently a realist to know that nothing lasts for ever. Everything changes. It might even be that eventually he would have a descendant who didn't care for golf and wanted to realize this particular asset. That would be fine, a matter of commercial choice. What he didn't envisage was that one of his descendants could be caught cheating at the game and expelled from the Hoo.'
'And this means all of Mr. Porphyry's shares go into this pool? And the other members can buy them up? Shoot, Butcher, would someone really do this to a nice guy like Christian just so they can get one of their chums into the Hoo without risk of blackball?'
The lawyer looked at him in amazement then began to laugh.
'Joe, Joe,' she said. 'This isn't about membership of a stupid golf club, it's not about blackballing-though I've a strong suspicion that a blackball is where it all started. The point is that if one guy or a group of like-minded guys get their hands on Porphyry's shares, then they'll have a majority holding and they can do with the club whatever they damn well like.'
'Such as?'
'Such as apply for development permission, which with the right connections isn't too hard to obtain. God, the properties already scattered around the Hoo site must be worth millions on the open market. As for development, think what an expanding supermarket chain might be willing to pay for a chunk of that land!'
'You mean, Wright-Price? Sir Monty?' said Joe aghast. 'You saying Sir Monty's set this thing up just to get his own back 'cos he thinks Christian blackballed him?'
'I think that getting Porphyry disgraced at the same time as adding a lot more dosh to his already obscene bank balance would be an irresistible combination to that nasty bastard,' snapped Butcher. 'And don't give me any sentimental crap about his charitable works and all the good he's done that sad football club of yours. When you see a smile on the face of the tiger, you need to ask yourself what it's been eating!'
Joe didn't argue-with Butcher in full spate, argument was futile-but he couldn't agree. OK, Sir Monty was sharp. You didn't get to be a multi-millionaire without cutting corners. But when it came to sporting morality, the Luton chairman made Aunt Mirabelle look like an estate agent. He thought one of City's players was diving, that got a t ast-chance warning. One more dive and it didn't matter if you were a full international and player of the year, you were out! How could a guy like that be mixed up in framing a fellow golfer for cheating?
Joe's head was in a whirl. From an objective, professional point of view, his investigation had made great strides forward, but he wished with all his heart he'd somehow managed to catch that early flight to Spain with Mimi.
Which reminded him. He glanced at his watch and began to rise.
'Where are you going?' demanded Butcher.
'The airport, I told you-'
'Sixsmith, you are unbelievable! Haven't you been listening to me? I've laid it out for you why I think your client's been set up! And if I'm right and this all leads back to Sir Monty bloody Wright, ask yourself who helped him get where he is today. Ratcliffe King, that's who, the man who's fixed it to get you out of the country. And all you can do on hearing this is rush off to the airport to make sure he's not disappointed!'
Joe said, 'Sounds a pretty healthy option to me. In fact, only last night you were telling me that I'd be mad to cross King Rat once I'd made a deal with him.'
'So when have I expressed belief in your sanity? You've got responsibilities to your client here, Joe.'
'Yeah? Well, Mr. King's a client too. His job's urgent. The golf-club thing ain't. I mean, this committee won't be considering Porphyry's case for another couple of weeks, and I'll be back long before then.'
'I'd bet Christian Porphyry's thinking it's a bit more urgent today,' said Butcher. 'You've not seen the Crier?'
She produced a copy of the tabloid which appealed to those local readers who found the Bugle too intellectual. Under the headline STORM IN A TEE CUP? was a brief account of the cheating accusations leveled at Porphyry. Joe could almost hear the glee in the last sentences: Only a week ago the engagement was announced (though not in the Crier's classifieds!) of Mr. Porphyry to Tiff, only daughter of Bruce Emerson, proprietor of the South Bedfordshire Bugle. We look forward to following the affair in the Bugle's pages.
'Shoot,' said Joe defiantly. 'That's rough, but it doesn't change things. Anyway, looks like you're making a lot more progress than I've managed. You take over, why don't you? Speed you work, you could have it all sorted by the time I get back.'
Butcher banged her tiny fist on her desk, toppling several piles of paper.
'Bullshit!' she cried. 'You're running away, that's what you're doing! Never thought I'd hear myself say this, but there are things you can do far better than me. I'm good at this stuff'-she gave the confusion of papers on her desk a further violent shuffle-'but it's not this stuff that's going to get things sorted, not without a lot more evidence. That's your job, Joe. The dirty nails, hands-on work. You're doing well, you're doing things right, otherwise they wouldn't want to be rid of you. So sit that well-upholstered backside of yours down and tell me what you've got, all of it, and let's try to work out how we can stymie these bastards!'
Joe, shaken more than he cared to admit by the onslaught, shook his head, as much to clear it as in denial. For once what Butcher was saying seemed to accord with Endo Venera's advice, go with the garbage, meaning in the lawyer's case that this was all he was good for.
He said. 'I gotta get out of here.'
