“He wants you to…” she started, but I interrupted her.
“Mrs. McDowd,” I said again loudly. “How did you get this number?”
“It was on the caller ID when you called in this morning,” she said.
That was careless, I thought, for someone meant to be in hiding.
“Anyway,” she said, “I know that number. You’re staying with your mother. How is she?”
Bloody Mrs. McDowd, I thought. How does she know so much about me?
“She’s fine, thank you,” I said, biting my tongue. “Now, what does Mr. Patrick want?”
“He wants you to call him in the morning before you come into the office. Something about arranging a meeting between you and Mr. Gregory.”
“Did he say what the meeting was about?” I asked.
“No,” she said, but I bet she knew. Mrs. McDowd knew everything.
“Please tell Mr. Patrick that I won’t be in the office very early tomorrow.”
“I’ve already told him that,” she said. “Not with you being down in Gloucestershire.”
Who else had she told?
In particular, had she told Mr. Gregory?
I spent much of the afternoon catching up on the changing price of derivatives and futures, and on how a recent fall in the Dow Jones Index in the United States had affected markets in the Far East more than those in Europe, and on fluctuations in the value of gold in pounds as a result of changes in the cost of a barrel of oil in dollars.
It was like a balancing act.
Some economies grew and others contracted; stock markets moved at different paces or in opposite ways; some currencies went up and others went down. The trick to winning in the great global financial game was to invest in the things about to go up in real value while selling those about to go down. Then there were hedge funds and short selling, both designed to make you money when the values went in the wrong direction.
But it was all a bit like gambling with a bookmaker. For you to win, he had to lose. So it was in the markets- there were winners and losers. The winners had big houses and the losers went bust, losing their big houses to the banks, which then sold them to the winners.
The money went round and round, but it did not always end up with the same people.
And then there were the fraudsters, those who tried to load the odds in their favor through insider trading or market manipulation.
Once upon a time, insider trading had been seen as a perk of the job for stockbrokers and company directors, cashing in on prior knowledge of profits and mergers by buying or selling stock before the facts were known to others. Nowadays, the courts send them to jail for doing what everyone used to do, and quite rightly too.
But there are always those who think they can beat the system, and many of them do, because betting on a certainty was like having a license to print money.
Herb Kovak had said to Mrs. McDowd that he liked to bet on certainties.
She’d told me.
Chief Inspector Tomlinson called back at five o’clock.
“He’d definitely been drinking,” he said. “I’ve seen the full autopsy report. There’s no mistake. They tested both his blood and the aqueous humor in his eye. And the stomach contained whisky residue.”
“How easy is it to force someone to drink whisky?” I asked.
“My, my,” he said. “Now who has the suspicious mind?”
“It’s just too convenient,” I said.
“But how could you give someone a heart attack?” he asked, his slightly sarcastic tone clearly indicating that he didn’t believe me.
“Hold his drunken head under the surface of his own swimming pool,” I said. “Either he drowns straightaway or, as he has a history of heart problems, he panics, has a heart attack and then drowns.”
“But why the alcohol?” he asked.
“To add confusion,” I said. “When you knew he’d been drinking, you instinctively believed he had been a stupid fool and you probably thought he half deserved to die for it.”
“True,” he said, “I did. But you are only speculating. There’s no evidence of foul play.”
“No,” I agreed. “And what there was has conveniently been buried in Golders Green.”
He laughed. “Story of my life.”
“What about Billy Searle?” I asked. “What did you find out?”
“He’s wide awake and talking,” he said. “But he’s not saying anything.”
“Nothing?”
“Pretty much. He refuses to say if he knew the person who knocked him off his bike. Says it was an accident. And he denies owing anyone any money.”
I wasn’t surprised. If it was a bookmaker and Billy was involved in some betting scandal, he was hardly likely to admit it. It would be tantamount to handing in his jockey’s license for good.
“Well, thanks for finding out for me,” I said. “Any news on the gunman?”
“Nothing as yet.”
“Didn’t you get any response from the video?”
“Masses,” he said. “Too much, really. The Met and us are sifting through it all, and cross-referencing with the criminal records bureau.”
That was what worried me the most. If he were a professional hit man, he was unlikely to have a criminal record, so he would never turn up from their cross-referencing.
“So how about that bodyguard you promised me?” I asked. “I can’t stay down here for long as it’s too far from London, but I don’t fancy going home with our friend still out there.”
“I’ll talk to my Super,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said. “And please make it soon.”
We disconnected, and I looked at my watch. It was quarter past five. Time to finish for the day.
I leaned back in the chair and pushed the GET MAIL button for a final check on my e-mails. One had arrived from Gregory Black.
I sat forward quickly and opened it.
“Nicholas,” he had written, “Patrick has asked me to write to you to apologize for my outburst of last week. So I am sorry. I can also assure you there will be no repetition of my actions when you return to this office after your stay with your mother. Yours, Gregory Black.”
Wow, I thought. My threat of court action had really put the cat amongst the pigeons. I could imagine Gregory absolutely hating having to write that e-mail with Patrick standing over him on one side and almost certainly with Andrew Mellor, the company’s lawyer, on the other, advising them both on employment law.
I may have received a grudging apology from Gregory, but he would resent it forever. And it wouldn’t make my future at the firm any easier.
I also didn’t like the fact that Gregory knew that I was staying with my mother.
Mrs. McDowd not only wanted to know everything about everyone, she also liked them to know she knew it by spreading the information. The whole office would now be aware that I was in Gloucestershire, and probably half of Lombard Street too.
At about seven-thirty my mother insisted I open a bottle of champagne to properly celebrate Claudia’s and my engagement.
“I put one in my old fridge last night,” she said, “so it should be nice and cold.”
And it was.
I retrieved the bottle and poured three glasses of the golden bubbly liquid, then we each in turn made a toast.
“To a long and happy marriage to my Claudia,” I said, and we drank.
“To long life and good health,” Claudia said, looking at me. We drank again.
“To masses of grandchildren,” my mother said, and we all drank once more.
