all it should be for the morning close-ups.
For the rest of the week I was a model professional. I take my job seriously, and I've learned already that the more conscientious you are, and the more co-operative you are with directors, the more work you'll be offered. That's certainly proved true in my case, so far at least. Scott Steele told me once that in his first three years as an actor, he worked for a total of four months. Any inactivity I've had up to now is of my own choosing, or to be more accurate, mine and Susie's.
As the days went by the crisis in the Gantry group seemed to get no worse. The share price improved, if only a little, but no more shares came to the market. It was Wednesday before Greg McPhillips' tame QC came up with her letters to the lawyers acting for each of our three problem buyers. Susie didn't trust the fax for the purpose, so instead she sent me an e-mail file, which I downloaded on to my laptop.
The draft seemed flawless to me, given my incomplete knowledge of Scottish legalese. It was for Greg McPhillips' signature as company secretary and it referred to recent publicity in the tabloid press.
While not commenting on, it said, far less concurring with the descriptions of the business activities of each of the buyers' husbands, it was a regrettable fact that the stories were having an adverse effect on the trading of the Gantry Group.
It went on to ask whether in the circumstances the solicitors' clients would be prepared to withdraw from the missives agreed for the purchase of the houses in question. The Gantry Group recognised that this would involve each buyer having incurred abortive expenses through no fault of their own. It was prepared to meet these costs in full and to offer an additional payment of five thousand pounds to each of the three.
I called her as soon as I'd read it. 'Seems fine to me,' I said.
'What do you think of the compensation offer?'
'Sensible. It's not so big that it'll encourage them to see it as a precedent.'
'Mmm,' Susie murmured. 'That's what I thought, but I don't know if it'll work. Greg's spoken to the Perrys' solicitor. He hinted that we'd be making them that sort of an offer to go away, but he got a dusty answer. The guy was non-committal at best: apparently he muttered something about damage to his clients' reputation.'
'That's a fucking laugh,' I commented, 'considering that Jock Perry has a reputation as one of the biggest crooks in Glasgow.'
'Maybe so, but Greg's reading is that they'll see they've got us by the shorts, and that they'll be looking for more than five grand.'
'Will you go up? Did the QC have a view on that?'
'She feels that ten grand would be safe, but that if we went much higher it would begin to look like bribery, and would set the sort of precedent we discussed… not just for ourselves, but for other builders. She's right about that one too; I've had a couple of my rivals on the phone already. On the face of it they've been expressing their sympathy, but really they're shitting themselves about how we handle it, and how it might affect them.'
I thought of some of Susie's rivals: it seemed to me that most of them cared about nothing more than the number of units they could build to the acre. As for the quality of their product, they were all in our wake. 'It'll affect them badly, I hope,' I told her.
'I'm sure you do, but I have to live with these people. I'm on the board of the House-builders' Association, remember.'
'You could always resign.'
'If I play this wrong, I'll have to.'
'You won't: it'll be fine. How's the witch-hunt going?'
'No suspects,' she replied, 'but Aidan Keane's resigned. He told me that there wasn't room for him and Fisher in the same company, and that since he'll be easier to replace, he's going.'
'Are you going to let him?'
'I'll have to. I can't sack Fisher for conducting a zealous investigation.'
'Not even if it's overzealous and fruitless?'
'Not even.'
'What about the Keane guy?' I recalled meeting him once at a Group party; I hadn't liked him much. His eyebrows met in the middle and he struck me as aggressive, just as Fisher had found him. 'Could he be your mole? Could he be going before he's caught? Could his outrage just be a smokescreen?'
'I don't think so, but I can't be sure,' she admitted. 'I suppose that if he goes to work for Torrent he'll move to the top of the list.'
'Speaking of Torrent,' I asked, 'have you heard anything from Ricky Ross?'
'Mmm, yes,' she said, with a new urgency in her voice. 'Have I ever. I was going to get round to that. He called me an hour ago. Nat Morgan had a very interesting lunch meeting today, in the Atrium Restaurant, in the Saltire Court office block, in Edinburgh.'
'Saltire Court? That's full of lawyers, accountants and fund managers, isn't it?'
'So I believe. And there were two of them at Morgan's lunch table.
There was her lawyer, Duncan Kendall, from Kendall McGuire, the top corporate firm, and her accountant, Alan Williams. But not just them,' she added, quickly. 'There were others; there was Marvin de Luca, a director of Industry Partners, the major league venture capital firm, and Hew Bothwell-Brody, a major league stockbroker who commutes between London and Edinburgh. Then there was Sir Nigel Lanark, the merchant banker.'
I could see them in my mind's eye, all those thousand quid suits trying not to ogle the tall, olive-skinned, chocolate-voiced client. 'What was the significance of that?' I asked. 'It sounds like just another expensive lunch to me.'
'No, love, that was no ordinary lunch. If it had just been Kendall and Williams, I'd have thought so, but not with the other three there.
Those guys are all players, financiers, the sort of people you'd want around you if you were planning to go into a takeover battle. I think Nat's getting geared up for action, and I'm in no doubt about what's being planned.'
'Do you think one of those guys might be her new man?' I asked.
'I asked Ricky that, but he said there was no sign of it; Natalie arrived and left on her own. He also says that he knows that de Luca, Kendall and Lanark are all married, and that the stockbroker's a poof.
Your friend has quite a database.'
Idly, I wondered what it would say about us. 'Do you think she'll move straight away?' I asked.
'No,' Susie replied, firmly. 'Not yet. I haven't told you about the sixth player at the table. It was Angela Rowntree.'
'And she is?' I knew that name from somewhere, but I couldn't pin it down.
'Managing director of Sapphire Investment managers.'
'Oh shit.' I knew that name; Sapphire controlled six of the biggest investment trusts in Scotland, and their total holdings included eighteen per cent of the stock of the Gantry Group. 'They were sounding her out?'
'Exactly. But she didn't bite; not yet, at any rate.'
'How do you know? Have you spoken to her?'
'No, and I can't, because I don't know about the meeting, do I? I know because our Ricky, clever bastard that he is, had one of his guys at a table across the restaurant, recording the conversation with a very small, but effective, directional mike. He said that Lanark asked her how she would feel about a takeover offer that valued the Gantry shares at significantly above current market price, subject to one hundred per cent acceptance. Angela told him that if it was significantly above the market price as it stood before the bad publicity on Monday, she'd probably expect the board to recommend acceptance, but that if it was simply based on the price as it stands today, she'd hold off to see how I managed the current crisis. She also said that Lanark and de Luca would be crazy if they underwrote a bid based on last week's price, and they had to agree with her.'
I thought about this. As I saw it, Susie had breathing space; a few days at least, and if she could manage to buy off the Three Bears, she should put herself in the clear. I said as much.
'Yes,' she agreed, 'provided that we don't have any more unforeseen disasters lurking in the undergrowth. I'm still uncomfortable, though;
I'm more than half expecting one of those disasters, but I haven't a bloody clue where it's coming from.' She sighed, un-Susie-like. 'Oz, don't get big-headed about this or anything but I wish you were here.'
'Friday afternoon,' I promised her. 'I've seen the schedule for the rest of the week, and with a bit of luck I
