Майкл Ридпат - Fatal Error

‘Watch Guy, David. He’s the actor, the schemer, the manipulator.’

‘Not a nice thing to say about your client.’

‘He’s not my client, technically. The estate is. And as I said, Tony was my friend.’

‘One last question. How long has Owen been at Les Sarrasins?’

‘Only a few days. Guy called me in the middle of last week to tell me he was coming.’

That was just after Henry had changed his mind about the investment in Ninetyminutes. It meant Owen was in England when Henry’s family had been threatened. It also suggested Guy might have known about what Owen was doing, and had waited to send him away until after Henry had capitulated. An unpleasant thought.

I stood up to leave. ‘Thank you, Mr Hoyle.’

‘Not at all.’ Hoyle groaned to his feet. ‘Did you say you’re going to Les Sarrasins now?’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘Be careful.’

As I drove up the winding road in low gear, with the Mediterranean stretching out a brilliant blue below me and the maquis clinging to the hillside above, I began to feel nervous. I had been impelled this far by the conviction that I had to do something to stop Owen. I had successfully pushed all thoughts of the risks involved out of my mind, but now, as I was approaching Les Sarrasins, they seemed all too obvious. Owen would not take kindly to what I was about to say. Owen was bigger and stronger than me, we had already established that. As long as Owen behaved rationally, I was safe. But how could I be convinced that Owen would be rational?

I almost turned back. But the thought of Owen causing more mayhem with other people’s lives in the name of Ninetyminutes kept me going. I had to stop him.

I parked the car outside the big gates and pressed the buzzer on the intercom. They swung open, and I left the car by the side of the road and walked into the courtyard in front of the house. It was as immaculate as I remembered it; clearly the Jourdan estate was still paying for the place to be maintained. I pressed another bell on the front door.

I waited and pressed the bell again. Finally I heard movement inside and the door opened.

It was Owen, dressed in grey Ninetyminutes T-shirt and shorts, his white spiky hair peeking out of a Ninetyminutes baseball cap. His feet were bare.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to talk to you.’ I pushed past him. I went through to the living room. Although Hoyle had said Owen had only been there a few days, the place was a tip. There were food wrappers, soft-drink cans and pizza boxes everywhere. A sweatshirt was draped over one of the abstract sculptures. And on a desk in a corner in the midst of the greatest concentration of rubbish a laptop hummed. I could clearly see the ninetyminutes.com logo on the screen. Owen was looking at our website.

He chuckled as I walked over to the machine. ‘You see, you can’t keep a good man away from the office.’

‘Are you trying to hack into our site?’

‘Hack into it? I go into it, like, every day. Sanjay might not have told you, but I like to keep a close eye on what goes on at Ninetyminutes.’

I turned to him, stunned. How foolish we had been! After Owen had left we had taken no measures to protect the system from him. There was all kinds of damage he could have been doing since he had left, probably had been doing.

‘Don’t look so shocked,’ Owen said, smirking. He was really enjoying this. ‘I haven’t done Ninetyminutes any harm. In fact, I’ve been a lot of help to Sanjay in the last couple of months.’

‘Does Guy know about this?’

‘Probably. We haven’t spoken about it specifically, but he knows me. You thought you’d gotten rid of me. But I can control things just as well from here.’

Jesus! But I believed Owen when he said he hadn’t done any actual harm. In fact he probably had done some good. I felt a surge of anger at Guy. He knew what Owen was doing. I was bloody sure he knew.

Owen moved over to the kitchen area, tripping over a pizza box on the way. A half-eaten slice spun across the floor.

‘Where’s Miguel?’ I asked.

‘He couldn’t handle the place like this, so I told him to stay away. But I think it feels kind of cosy.’

He opened a can of 7 Up and strolled out into the garden. I followed him. It was a brilliantly sunny day, but there was a cool breeze blowing in from the sea. He sat down at a table near the marble railings overlooking Cap Ferrat, and I joined him. Wrappers and cans lay at the base of the lavender bed a couple of feet away. Owen was treating his father’s house with the contempt that he had always felt for its owner. His smugness was getting to me, as I was sure he intended it to.

‘I know what you’ve been doing,’ I said.

Owen sipped his drink and squinted out to sea, ignoring me.

‘You threatened Henry Broughton-Jones. Scared the wits out of his family so that he gave Ninetyminutes the ten million quid.’

‘Really? How do you know that?’

‘Don’t worry: he wouldn’t tell me anything. But it’s obvious he’s scared. And it’s obvious who’s been scaring him.’ I wanted to keep Henry safe from any more of Owen’s attention.

‘So, Orchestra did invest, did they?’ Owen said.

‘And you sent the virus to Goaldigger.’

‘Technically it wasn’t a virus. It was a worm.’

‘I don’t care what it was, technically,’ I said, fighting to keep my frustration under control. ‘It was sabotage.’

‘Horrible,’ said Owen. ‘I hope they catch whoever did it.’

‘I know you killed Dominique. And I think it’s highly likely that you killed Abdulatif.’

‘Abdulatif?’

‘The gardener who was blackmailing you and Guy.’

‘Oh, you mean the dude the police think wasted my stepmother.’

‘Yes. Him. You knew Patrick Hoyle was going to pay him off. You followed Hoyle to the drop. You saw him give the money to Abdulatif. You followed him and then stabbed him.’

‘Man, you do have some weird ideas.’

‘And I think you got your father killed. I don’t know how, but I’m sure you arranged it.’

‘Have you been smoking something?’

This time I stared out to sea, towards the white craft buzzing round Cap Ferrat.

‘You don’t have any proof,’ Owen said at last.

‘No. But I have enough to get the police asking difficult questions.’

‘I don’t think so. You have nothing to link me with any of this. Half this stuff happened, like, years ago.’

‘I want you to stop,’ I said.

‘Stop what?’

‘Stop threatening people. Stop hurting people. Stop killing people.’

‘Huh!’ Owen snorted.

‘I know you’re doing all this for Ninetyminutes. I know you think it’ll help your brother. But Ninetyminutes can get by without that kind of help.’

‘Can it? I don’t think so. You know how close Ninetyminutes has gotten to the edge. It’s been real lucky to make it this far. I guess sometimes it needs a little help.’

‘I’d rather Ninetyminutes went bust than it survived with your kind of help.’

‘You know what? I don’t give a shit what you think.’ Owen’s flippancy left him: he looked serious. ‘Ninetyminutes means everything to my brother. It’s, like, his last chance. It’s also his best chance. If it works he’s going to be just as rich as Dad, probably richer. If it fails, it’s going to be worse than just a disappointment to him. It will totally destroy him. I don’t like you very much, but I know you like him. You know I’m right.’

Owen was trying to talk me into seeing his point of view. That was a first. But he was right. I remembered Guy in the Jerusalem Tavern the evening after Henry had turned us down. If Ninetyminutes went under, so would Guy.