year. It was then that I made my first mistake: I invited Jeremy to become Deputy Chairman of the company.
Under the terms of the flotation, fifty-one percent of the shares would be retained by Rosemary and myself. Jeremy explained to me that for tax reasons they should be divided equally between us. My accountants agreed, and at the time I didn’t give it a second thought. The remaining 4,900,000 one-pound shares were quickly taken up by institutions and the general public, and within days of the company being listed on the Stock Exchange their value had risen to ?2.80.
My father, who had died the previous year, would never have accepted that it was possible to become worth several million pounds overnight. In fact I suspect he would have disapproved of the very idea, as he went to his deathbed still believing that a ten-pound overdraft was quite adequate to conduct a well-run business.
During the 1980s the British economy showed continual growth, and by March 1984 Cooper’s shares had topped the five-pound mark, following press speculation about a possible takeover. Jeremy had advised me to accept one of the bids, but I told him that I would never allow Cooper’s to be let out of the family’s control. After that, we had to split the shares on three separate occasions, and by 1989 the
I had never thought of myself as being wealthy — after all, as far as I was concerned the shares were simply pieces of paper held by Joe Ramsbottom, our company solicitor. I still lived in my father’s house, drove a five-year- old Jaguar, and worked fourteen hours a day. I had never cared much for holidays, and wasn’t by nature extravagant. Wealth seemed somehow irrelevant to me. I would have been happy to continue living much as I was, had I not arrived home unexpectedly one night.
I had caught the last plane back to Heathrow after a particularly long and arduous negotiation in Cologne, and had originally intended to stay overnight in London. But by then I’d had enough of hotels, and simply wanted to get home, despite the long drive. When I arrived back in Leeds a few minutes after one, I found Jeremy’s white BMW parked in the driveway.
Had I phoned Rosemary earlier that day, I might never have ended up in jail.
I parked my car next to Jeremy’s, and was walking towards the front door when I noticed that there was only one light on in the house — in the front room on the first floor. It wouldn’t have taken Sherlock Holmes to deduce what might be taking place in that particular room.
I came to a halt, and stared up at the drawn curtains for some time. Nothing stirred, so clearly they hadn’t heard the car, and were unaware of my presence. I retraced my steps and drove quietly off in the direction of the city centre. When I arrived at the Queen’s Hotel I asked the duty manager if Mr Jeremy Alexander had booked a room for the night. He checked the register and confirmed that he had.
“Then I’ll take his key,” I told him. “Mr Alexander has booked himself in somewhere else for the night.” My father would have been proud of such thrifty use of the company’s resources.
I lay on the hotel bed, quite unable to sleep, my anger rising as each hour passed. Although I no longer had a great deal of feeling for Rosemary, and even accepted that perhaps I never had, I now loathed Jeremy. But it wasn’t until the next day that I discovered just how much I loathed him.
The following morning I rang my secretary, and told her I would be driving to the office straight from London. She reminded me that there was a board meeting scheduled for two o’clock, which Mr Alexander was pencilled in to chair. I was glad she couldn’t see the smile of satisfaction that spread across my face. A quick glance at the agenda over breakfast and it had become abundantly clear why Jeremy had wanted to chair this particular meeting. But his plans didn’t matter anymore. I had already decided to let my fellow directors know exactly what he was up to, and to make sure that he was dismissed from the board as soon as was practicable.
I arrived at Cooper’s just after 1.30, and parked in the space marked “Chairman”. By the time the board meeting was scheduled to begin I’d had just enough time to check over my files, and became painfully aware of how many of the company’s shares were now controlled by Jeremy, and what he and Rosemary must have been planning for some time.
Jeremy vacated the chairman’s place without comment the moment I entered the boardroom, and showed no particular interest in the proceedings until we reached an item concerning a future share issue. It was at this point that he tried to push through a seemingly innocuous motion which could ultimately have resulted in Rosemary and myself losing overall control of the company, and therefore being unable to resist any future takeover bid. I might have fallen for it if I hadn’t travelled up to Leeds the previous evening and found his car parked in my driveway, and the bedroom light on. Just when he thought he had succeeded in having the motion agreed without a vote, I asked the company accountants to prepare a full report for the next board meeting before we came to any decision. Jeremy showed no sign of emotion. He simply looked down at his notes and began drumming his fingers on the boardroom table. I was determined that the report would prove to be his downfall. If only it hadn’t been for my short temper, I might, given time, have worked out a more sensible way of ridding myself of him.
As no one had “any other business” to raise, I closed the meeting at 5.40, and suggested to Jeremy that he join Rosemary and me for dinner. I wanted to see them together. Jeremy didn’t seem too keen, but after some bluffing from me about not fully understanding his new share proposal, and feeling that my wife ought to be brought in on it at some stage, he agreed. When I rang Rosemary to let her know that Jeremy would be coming to dinner, she seemed even less enthusiastic about the idea than he had been.
“Perhaps the two of you should go off to a restaurant together,” she suggested. “Then Jeremy can bring you up to date on what’s been going on while you’ve been away.” I tried not to laugh. “We haven’t got much food in at the moment,” she added. I told her that it wasn’t the food I was worried about.
Jeremy was uncharacteristically late, but I had his usual whisky and soda ready the moment he walked through the door. I must say he put up a brilliant performance over dinner, though Rosemary was less convincing.
Over coffee in the sitting room, I managed to provoke the confrontation that Jeremy had so skilfully avoided at the board meeting.
“Why are you so keen to rush through this new share allocation?” I asked once he was on his second brandy. “Surely you realise that it will take control of the company out of the hands of Rosemary and me. Can’t you see that we could be taken over in no time?”
He tried a few well-rehearsed phrases. “In the best interests of the company, Richard. You must realise how quickly Cooper’s is expanding. It’s no longer a family firm. In the long term it has to be the most prudent course for both of you, not to mention the shareholders.” I wondered which particular shareholders he had in mind.
I was a little surprised to find Rosemary not only backing him up, but showing a remarkable grasp of the finer details of the share allocation, even after Jeremy had scowled rather too obviously at her. She seemed extremely well-versed in the arguments he had been putting forward, given the fact that she had never shown any interest in the company’s transactions in the past. It was when she turned to me and said, “We must consider our future, darling,” that I finally lost my temper.
Yorkshiremen are well known for being blunt, and my next question lived up to our county’s reputation.
“Are you two having an affair, by any chance?”
Rosemary turned scarlet. Jeremy laughed a little too loudly, and then said, “I think you’ve had one drink too many, Richard.”
“Not a drop,” I assured him. “Sober as a judge. As I was when I came home late last night, and found your car parked in the driveway and the light on in the bedroom.”
For the first time since I’d met him, I had completely wrong-footed Jeremy, even if it was only for a moment. He began drumming his fingers on the glass table in front of him.
“I was simply explaining to Rosemary how the new share issue would affect her,” he said, hardly missing a beat. “Which is no more than is required under Stock Exchange regulations.”
“And is there a Stock Exchange regulation requiring that such explanations should take place in bed?”
“Oh, don’t be absurd,” said Jeremy. “I spent the night at the Queen’s Hotel. Call the manager,” he added, picking up the telephone and offering it to me. “He’ll confirm that I was booked in to my usual room.”
“I’m sure he will,” I said. “But he’ll also confirm that it was I who spent the night in your usual bed.”
In the silence that followed I removed the hotel bedroom key from my jacket pocket, and dangled it in front of him. Jeremy immediately jumped to his feet.
I rose from my chair, rather more slowly, and faced him, wondering what his next line could possibly be.
“It’s your own fault, you bloody fool,” he eventually stammered out. “You should have taken more interest in Rosemary in the first place, and not gone off gallivanting around Europe all the time. It’s no wonder you’re in danger
