Quintin Jardine - Deadly Business

‘Are you telling me you were using the guy as a weapon all along?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I didn’t have that in mind at the start. But when Phil introduced him to Susie, and he told me that she’d made a flat-out play for him, I thought, “why the hell not?” so I told him what I wanted him to do. At first, all I’d thought about was getting some revenge in general. Yes, the book was my idea; I know that Oz was no lily-white, and don’t you try to deny it, Primavera, so do you. But it was meant to embarrass Susie, that was all. Using it to extort cash from you, that was all Duncan’s stupid idea. I don’t know why, but Duncan hates your kid; that’s where it came from, why he did it.’

She paused for a couple of seconds. ‘Yes, I know, it was stupid; I went ballistic when he told me, I almost chucked him out, I was so mad. He backed off from Susie, thinking you’d be bound to tell her, then, just a couple of weeks later, Phil told him that she was ill, very seriously ill, maybe even terminally, and that he’d be pretty much running Gantry for a while.’

‘Was that when you came up with the Babylon Links scheme?’

Natalie smiled, her self-confidence and self-satisfaction restored. She nodded. ‘I’d owned the land for years. My Uncle James bought it for a song from a friend who needed some cash. He was a secretive sod, was old James; in particular he wasn’t a big fan of inheritance tax, and did everything he could to avoid it. He salted away all sorts of assets in offshore companies, mainly Monsoon, using a nominee shareholder, usually Diego Fabricant. They all came to me when he died. Some I disposed of, but the Monsoon Holdings land was pretty much useless, so I was stuck with it.’

She sipped some wine and gazed at me, across her desk. ‘There are some big advantages in looking like me,’ she said. ‘Probably the biggest is that people focus on one’s body without even considering one’s mind. But in business that can work against you, especially when you find yourself running a major company in your twenties as I did. That’s why you didn’t find my image on any of my corporate literature: I don’t want it to affect perceptions of Torrent PLC. You must know this, Primavera; you’ve probably experienced it yourself. Little Susie, on the other hand, not being quite so gifted in the looks department, found it much more easy to be taken seriously as a businesswoman. You with me?’

I nodded; I couldn’t disagree with her.

‘What I’m saying is that I really am very bright. I think even you will concede that Babylon Links was a masterstroke. When I heard of Susie’s illness, I knew that Gantry had to be vulnerable. But it was still too big for me to swallow without conceding a substantial slice of the ownership of Torrent. In other words, I couldn’t do the deal for cash alone, there would have had to be shares involved, diluting my one hundred per cent ownership. So I wondered, “With Susie gone for a while at least, can I find a way to destabilise Gantry’s share price?” and that’s when the golf development was born, a joint venture, my land, their cash, and great wedges of it, without anyone ever knowing that I was involved because the true ownership of Monsoon is untraceable. Brilliant, yes?’

‘Clearly so,’ I conceded. ‘It’s worked, even if that owes a lot to poor old Phil being suckered by his nephew.’

‘He was one of Susie’s bigger mistakes,’ she said. ‘I knew from Duncan that the old man has never got over his wife’s death. He goes home every night, gets drunk and talks to her across the dinner table, as if she was still there. Do you ever do that with Oz?’ she asked, suddenly. ‘Did Susie?’ She laughed. ‘Did the two of you ever get the ouija board out and try to summon up his shade?’

There’s something hypnotic about Natalie Morgan. As I’d listened to her, I’d been drawn into what she was saying, seeing the sense and logic of it. With that last vindictive taunt she blew it all. But I bided my time.

‘Still,’ I countered, ‘it was a long shot, was it not?’

‘Not at all,’ she insisted. ‘The way it was set up, once Phil had taken the Gantry Group in he couldn’t get it out. The damage was done. Then Duncan had a message from Susie, via Phil. She said that she didn’t have long to go, that she didn’t know why he’d left her … that was the first time we knew that you hadn’t shopped him … and that she wanted him back. So I told him to go to her. I saw the way to complete control and now I have it.’

‘The marriage was your idea?’ I asked.

‘Of course. It was really handy being so close to Nevada, where you can do the deed in a couple of hours if you really want to. Viva Las Vegas, eh? As it turned out, Duncan made it work just in time. To be honest, I didn’t think Susie would be silly enough to defy the medical advice and fly all that way.’

‘No. You’d have thought the loving husband would have put his foot down and forbidden her.’

She shot me the archest of looks. ‘Oh, please,’ she chuckled. Then she winked at me. ‘You weren’t anticipated, I admit. I was astonished when you popped out of the woodwork on Monday as the new chair. You of all people, the woman whose husband the little slapper stole.’

I laughed, so heartily that she was taken aback. ‘Yes, she was good at that, wasn’t she?’ I rose from my chair, and headed for the door. ‘I think it’s time my driver joined us,’ I told her, over my shoulder.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ she called after me.

I ignored her and opened the door; my driver stepped through it and into the room. As he did, he took off the grey German officer cap he’d been wearing, and the big Vuarnet sunglasses that had covered half his face. ‘I don’t think you’ve met my brother-in-law,’ I said, ‘but you may know him by sight. He’s not as reticent as you are when it comes to cameras. Did you get that, Miles?’ I asked.

‘Every word of it,’ he replied. ‘Good quality.’

‘I’ll call security,’ Natalie threatened.

Miles hook his head. ‘Don’t do that. There’s a guy downstairs in the lobby by now; he won’t let them anywhere near here … unless you have half a dozen or so, in which case he’ll only delay them for a while.’

I resumed my seat, picked up my wine glass, and took my first sip. ‘Ouch,’ I murmured. ‘It’s a shame to treat a fine wine like that. You should use nitrogen storage; prevents oxidisation.’

Natalie stared at me; she’d run out of words, temporarily.

I nodded. ‘Yes, you really are very bright, aren’t you? Sixty watt at least.’ I picked up my mobile from the desk. ‘Yes, this is my phone,’ I said, ‘and it really is switched off.’ Then I produced another from my bag. ‘This is my boyfriend’s, and it isn’t.’

Miles produced a third from his jacket. ‘This is my nephew Tom’s phone.’ And a fourth. ‘This is mine; your entire conversation is recorded on it.’

She sat there, pale but fierce. ‘And what are you going to do with it?’ she challenged.

‘Are you kidding?’ he laughed. ‘I’m going to see the friendly local police force, honey, and I’m going to play it to them.’

‘And what exactly will they do?’ she snorted. ‘Tell me what law I’ve broken.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s this one. It’s rare, I’m sure, so rare they’ve probably never had a case before, but it sure as hell has to be illegal somewhere.’

He grinned as he eased himself into a chair, beside mine. ‘When Primavera told me yesterday morning what had gone down with Susie, and what she guessed was going to happen, she asked me to confirm that she and Duncan had actually been married, legally and above board. So I had an employee call the Clark Country marriage registration office and run a check. The person there did a computer search for the name Duncan Culshaw, and sure enough, there it was, he and Susie Gantry, Mr and Mrs.’