Harry Bingham - The Money Makers

‘Oh, it seems a terrible shame to spend your first night on honeymoon in the airport hotel. It’s not very nice, to be honest.’

‘Well, I suppose we don’t have much of a choice. I’m sure Sophie will be OK after a few days, though she is very superstitious.’

Sophie did a good job pretending that she wouldn’t get over the shock in a few months, let alone a few days. Matthew felt his shirt sticking to his chest where it was soaked from her tears.

‘Just a second. Let me see what I can do. I wouldn’t have wanted my honeymoon to be spoiled by anything like this.’

The stewardess whisked away. Matthew went on petting the sobbing Sophie. It was no torture. He hoped the stewardess would take her time. With her gone, Sophie held herself away from Matthew’s body but she stayed put.

‘Good thinking,’ he whispered into her hair.

‘Good job,’ she responded before getting on with more heavy-duty sobbing.

He stroked and she sobbed for a few minutes more. She was heaven, better than perfect. Matthew, her pretend husband, was virtually ready to marry her for real on the spot. All too soon the stewardess returned, smiling.

‘Luckily we have a couple of seats available in first class. They were booked, but nobody has shown up for them. I’ll book you in right away with the compliments of the airline.’

Within a minute they slipped away, hand in hand down the fast-track passport channel. A happy glance behind told them that the fifty or sixty frantic passengers they’d left screaming and shouting at the check-in desk were still there, still yelling. Matthew turned to Sophie.

‘Do tell me about our wedding. I seem to have forgotten it.’

She laughed. Her teeth were very white.

‘Tsk. Forgotten already? I have a good mind to divorce you.’

‘Better wait till we’re airborne. We wouldn’t want them to change their minds. That was quite a show you put on.’

‘I’ve been able to make myself cry since I was seven. I used it to make sure I never got in trouble for starting a fight, even when I had.’

They parted after passport control, she to the Harrods boutique, he to the newsagent for magazines. But their seats were together, and the armrest between them was already adorned with a bottle of champagne and flowers. Matthew, arriving first, was obliged to describe the happy day in exact detail to the inquisitive cabin crew until Sophie’s arrival rescued him.

They were left alone for a while as they made themselves at home in the luxurious seats. Matthew stretched out his legs and felt with difficulty for the seat a long way ahead of him. The menu promised good things, and a video library exclusively for first class assured him of a good evening’s entertainment. He glanced sideways again at Sophie. She had pulled a navy lambswool jumper out of her bag and had thrown it over her shoulders. She was casual, assured and beautiful. She wore her two rings on her ring finger, but Matthew could see the faint circles of pale skin which betrayed their normal positions. So she wasn’t married.

Matthew urgently wished he was more to her than a casual accomplice in a petty fraud. One of the stewardesses came over again.

‘We don’t have details of your destination address on arrival in New York. We have a complimentary limousine service to take you wherever you’re going to.’

Matthew paused. The gentlemanly thing would be to allow Sophie to give her address. He could get a cab from the airport. He already felt a sense of loss at their approaching parting. He had made up his mind to get to know her as well as he could on the flight over. If she was as great as she seemed, he’d do his utmost to mix pleasure with business during his five-month stay in New York.

Sophie pulled out an address slip. ‘It’s the intersection of Park Avenue and 75th Street. Upper East Side.’

It was the same block as Matthew was going to. The sheet of paper on which the address was printed had a familiar look to it. Hudson House. A small hotel with one very large corporate client. When the stewardess was out of earshot again, Matthew leaned over to Sophie.

‘Are you with Madison by any chance?’

She looked at him sharply.

‘I’m beginning the training programme tomorrow. That’s why I was so keen to make the plane.’

‘Me too. On both counts.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’

They formally shook hands, carefully so none of the cabin staff could see. It was only forty minutes after the moment that her tears had been gluing his shirt to his chest, and about thirty-nine minutes after Matthew had decided to see more of her.

Now he was both relieved and tense. Relieved because he would see her every single day for the next five months. Tense because he remembered the famous speech he was due to hear tomorrow. The beautiful Sophie Clemenceau might become a friend and colleague. If Matthew had his way she would also become his lover. But for five months she was also to be a competitor.

George had found a solicitor in Ilkley to draw up the Sale Agreement which would legally transfer Gissings into his name. He had instructed the solicitor to make the document totally one-sided and sent two copies round to Gissing. He assumed he’d have to make some concessions to get the old man’s consent, but one copy of the contract came back by return signed in a shaky hand, ‘Thomas Gissing, Proprietor and Managing Director, 1963–98’. There were no amendments.

Eleven weeks since hearing his father’s will, George owned a company. Its annual turnover was £1.5 million. Excluding the bank loan, its assets were valued in the accounts at around £350,000. So far, George had spent one pound plus a few hundred in solicitor’s fees. He should be feeling good.

He wasn’t. It was now Monday. On Friday, The Gissings Modern Furniture Company was required to repay more than half a million pounds to the bank. Val Bartlett, old Tom Gissing’s secretary and now his, was able to find about fifteen quid in the company’s petty cash tin. There was a float of perhaps five pounds in a decaying vending machine. George’s car would fetch twenty grand second-hand. And that was it.

George made an appointment to see David Ballard, the company’s bank manager.

As luck would have it, Ballard had been Bernard Gradley’s bank manager when Gradley had first opened an account, and they’d done good business together. Both men’s empires expanded. Ballard took over responsibility for all lending to mid-sized companies in Yorkshire and the North West, while Gradley’s business spread across the nation. Despite their different paths, the two men had maintained a respectful friendship. If George needed a favour to get him started, Ballard should be the ideal man to grant it.

Ballard’s office overlooked the old market square in Richmond, a well-to-do market town in North Yorkshire. The room was furnished by Ballard himself, not his employer, and the result was welcoming and warm. Ballard had been offered promotions, but he refused anything which took him away from Yorkshire. His clients loved him and his bosses left him alone. He welcomed George with coffee and biscuits.

‘Well, well, George. It’s a while since I’ve seen you. Very sorry to hear about your father’s death. Very sorry indeed. You must be very cut up, I suppose. How’s poor Helen taking it?’

Ballard munched on the biscuits as he spoke. He was a fat man with greying hair and moustache. He had the no-nonsense mouth of the tough banker and the twinkly eyes of a kind and humorous man. Crumbs from his biscuits lodged inside his moustache.

George shrugged. According to Josie, their mother was in a very bad way indeed, having teetered on the brink of following their father into the night. As it was now … but Ballard didn’t need to know the real, gloomy story. A brightly-coloured fairy tale would do for him.