Glenn Patterson - Gull

But DeLorean had decided. He said it again, ‘It’s not possible.’

Randall awoke next morning to photographers camped outside the gates of Warren House. They were still there — if anything had swelled in numbers — when he returned from the factory that evening, there when he picked up the phone at gone eleven o’clock to call DeLorean again.

‘I think we should let these guys in,’ Randall said.

‘Why in the world would we do that?’

‘To let them see we have nothing to hide.’

‘Edmund, you ought to know better than that. We don’t capitulate to asinine gossip in this country.’ By ‘this’, Randall assumed, he meant ‘that’, which is to say not the country from where he was speaking but the one where Randall stood listening while looking out at the spark-spark-flare of the press photographers’ lighters. ‘And we don’t let people bully their way into our homes either. If anyone does think we have something to hide let them get a warrant.’

So then early the following evening the police arrived, two armoured Land Rovers of them, very apologetic. Doubly apologetic: ‘We need two Land Rovers these days just to check a dog licence,’ said the inspector who dismounted from the back of the second, warrant in hand. They had been asked, he went on, as part of the investigation into the allegations made by Mr Nicholas Winterton to examine certain fixtures and fittings…

‘You mean faucets?’

‘Gold painted,’ the inspector said to Randall when his examination of the f-words in question (it had lasted for several silent minutes) was complete. ‘Gold painted,’ he said to his men, distributed about the sitting-room sofas as comfortably as their holsters and body armour would allow. He turned again to Randall. ‘That’s not really the same thing at all, is it?’

‘No,’ said Randall, ‘it isn’t,’ and he heard all around him the sound of heavily armed men struggling to lever themselves up from soft furnishings.

Nicholas Winterton was not so easily satisfied, or as eager to quit his cushion on the sofa of a Breakfast TV set, which he had been inhabiting, it seemed, non-stop since he had set the misuse-of-public-funds hare running. Well, parliament was, for all that it was October, still in summer recess. Where else did he have to be?

There had been further ‘revelations’ in the papers about DeLorean’s track record with expenses at General Motors: the highest claims in the entire company — highest in the entire history of the company.

Which finally brought the man himself into the fray, in an Italian-suited, Breakfast-TV-sofa, thank-you-for-giving-me-the-right-of-reply kind of way. ‘I am proud of my expense claims at GM,’ he told the interviewer, with a corroborating tilt of his chin. ‘Do you know why? Because I never once disguised them the way executives did who were spending three times as much as me, and I never — ever — freeloaded on dealers out in the field who were already getting a hard time over their expenses. I settled all my bills and brought the receipts back to head office where everyone could see them.’ As for the memo that had started all of this the police had already investigated some of its more outlandish accusations, but the fact that such a memo existed proved how open and transparent the DeLorean Motor Company was. He did not think there was a single shredder in the whole organisation.

Sure, some people who worked for him asked questions. That was their prerogative: more than their prerogative, it was their duty as DeLorean Motor Company employees. Frankly, the more of these sorts of memos there were in circulation the better. We all liked to think we were going to be around for ever — and he sure as heck wasn’t planning on going anywhere any time soon — but ‘All Things Must Pass’, wasn’t that what they said? At least he could be sure he would be leaving some pretty well informed people behind. If anybody was looking for some DeLorean gold , meanwhile, they could enter the raffle that American Express was planning on running for two specially commissioned DMC-12s: not painted, but 24-carat-electroplated.

The interviewer, hands dangling between his knees now, cross-examination over, segued into a question about Cristina Ferrare. Actually, a volley of them: She was back on the small screen in the US, was that right? The Love Boat ? Was he a fan of the series? How much influence did he have on her choice of roles?

‘With respect, you obviously don’t know Cristina if you think I could influence the parts she chooses. Of course’ — a smile as he said this — ‘I had a few ideas for improvements to the boat , although’ — the smile turned rueful — ‘I thought maybe I ought to confine my observations to the engine-room and the exterior… ’

Even the cameraman could be heard to chuckle.

A week and a day after it broke Winterton’s story was officially a non-story. Police on both sides of the Irish Sea let it be known that they would not be making any further enquiries.

All the same the announcement of the stock-market flotation was put on hold for a few weeks to allow the scandal that wasn’t (because despite the retractions there were always those who were slow to pick up on the ‘wasn’t’) time to fade from the share-buying public’s consciousness.

You only got one chance with something like this. Even a dollar below the optimum could jeopardise the entire issue.

Marion, meanwhile, to no one’s great surprise, did not return to New York. Haddad too was gone, though in the opposite direction, his name removed from the door in Dunmurry as quickly as it had gone up, and letting it be known that his departure at any rate would not be quiet. He had served the goddammed Kennedys, the UN, it would take a hell of a lot more than a moral pygmy like John DeLorean to shut him up.

*

June’s fiancé had been home from the rigs on an extended leave, in the course of which he had landed an interview at Lear Fan through a friend who worked there. He had the funniest story, she said to Randall in one rather snatched conversation, which she must remember to tell him next time they had ‘a proper chance to talk’. Although speaking of that, she had also, while he was home, spent a lot of time discussing the wedding, less than six months away now. It had put manners on her — she smiled — well a wee bit anyway. Maybe when the honeymoon and all was over and her husband was back on the rigs — somehow she couldn’t see him settling to a job in a factory — she and Randall could, you know, pick things up again, assuming he was still around himself. Randall suggested she might feel differently once the ring was actually on her finger (June: ‘I can’t think why’), but, for what it was worth, yes, he thought there was a fair chance he would still be here. He had caught himself a couple of times lately actually making plans predicated on that fact. Maybe come the summer he would have Tamsin over, fly out there and bring her back with him, or at least as far as Dublin if Pattie was nervous about her coming north. He could take her to the Ring of Kerry, Connemara, Blarney Castle. Her face when she saw that: an actual castle, Tamsin… or when she went into a café and asked for a soda… Thoughts to raise the spirits as the autumn days turned darker, danker.

On one such day — the darkest and dankest yet — Thursday, towards the end of November, three transporters, each carrying twenty-four cars, left mid morning, on schedule, for the docks. Some time after two that afternoon Randall took a call from one of the drivers. All three of them were parked up in a lay-by about a mile from the harbour, pointing back towards the factory. ‘The fella at the gate said he had instructions not to let us in. Said there were dock fees outstanding. I saw the phone box here and thought maybe I would ring before we drove back through the town to the factory. I mean people are always waving when they see us and they’d be wondering, you know, was there something the matter.’