Christmas in the Snow (50 page)

‘You OK?’ Isobel asked, putting a hand on her knee.

‘Of course,’ she smiled, banishing Sam Kemp from her thoughts.

‘You were amazing today.’

‘No.’

‘Yes. Mum would have been so proud.’

Allegra hesitated. ‘I’m just sorry we can’t do more.’

‘We can only do what we can do, Legs. Besides, look what you’ve got for her.’ She patted the memory book sticking out of her bag. ‘Stories to share for the good days,
like you said. That’s worth more than revenge.’

They rounded the corner into the arrivals hall, with the buggy’s orange lights flashing and a warning beep alerting stragglers to move out of their path. There were still hundreds of
people milling about – some lovers being reunited, many of them bored drivers with names written on whiteboards.

‘Oh my God!’ Isobel squealed suddenly, clapping her hands across her mouth as she caught sight of Lloyd in his curious trapper hat waving Ferds in his baby-blue snowsuit and a
‘Welcome home, Mummy!’ banner, which had been made of five A4 sheets sellotaped together and decorated with felt-tip rainbows and hearts. He saw them coming through like VIPs and in the
next instant disappeared, running round the back of the crowd and emerging in front of them moments later, forcing the buggy driver to perform an emergency stop.

‘Oh, Iz,’ he said with a tender croak in his voice as he saw her knee brace, reaching down to kiss her just as Ferdy grabbed her hair. Impressively, Isobel managed not to shout,
simply winding her index finger into his little fist and feeling the strength of his squeeze as she bent down and kissed his snub nose.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘No. Champagne helps.’

He laughed, looking up and noticing Allegra. ‘Hey, Legs, how’ve you been?’ And he reached over to give her a kiss on the cheek as Isobel held Ferdy in her arms.

‘Nice artwork,’ Allegra said drily, her eyes on the banner. ‘Must’ve taken you some time.’

He chuckled. ‘Yeah, well . . . Ferdy helped.’

‘I can’t believe you’ve kept him up this late,’ Isobel mock scolded, clearly delighted.

‘Sleep was not an option. He was desperate to see you. We both were.’

Isobel looked up at the tone in his voice and Allegra looked away discreetly as he kissed her again. Maybe it was true – absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

‘Seeing as you’ve got someone picking you up, I’ll give you the wheelchair to use in the car park,’ the driver said gruffly to Allegra. ‘Just bring it back to the
passenger enquiries desk over there.’

‘Will do. Thanks,’ she smiled, gathering Isobel’s crutches and hopping down.

‘I swear he’s grown another foot,’ Isobel said a moment later as she settled in the wheelchair, gazing down at her baby son.

‘Really? There were definitely only two earlier.’

‘No, I mean—’ Isobel managed before catching sight of Lloyd’s expression and dissolving into giggles.

Allegra pulled the bags as Lloyd pushed Isobel and Ferds in the wheelchair and they found the car in the multistorey car park. It was snowing hard, for London, and a bitter wind pitted the
soft-blanketed ground, garlands of tinsel wrapped round the trolleys a visitor’s first sign that Christmas was almost here. Fifteen minutes later, they were on the M4 and heading back into
London in Lloyd’s trusty black Golf, Ferdy fast asleep in the car seat beside Allegra in the back as Lloyd set the blowers to ‘max’ to warm them all up. Isobel looked like she was
in a wind tunnel, her hair blowing back dramatically from her face as she filled Lloyd in with the new family history and he squeezed her good knee, looking at her like she was a goddess.

Just wait till he sees the gold dress, Allegra thought to herself, picking up a battered copy of today’s
Times
and thumbing through it. If she got a cab over to the office from
Isobel’s house, she could squeeze a shower in, too, while she waited. Isobel must have something smart she could borrow. A suit she wore for funerals perhaps?

The thought of funerals made her eyes fall to the tin ring on her hand. She still hadn’t taken it off and she felt in no hurry to do so.

‘. . . wasn’t an Advent calendar at all, see, but like a memory box,’ Isobel was saying. ‘There’s a bracelet made with holly berries that he picked the day Mum was
born.’

‘Holly berries? Aren’t they poisonous?’ Lloyd frowned.

‘I
know
, right?’ Isobel said animatedly. ‘You could
never
put them near a child.’

‘Social services would be straight in,’ Lloyd agreed.

In the back seat, Allegra sighed and carried on reading.

‘And then there’s like this little wire heart threaded with edelweiss. He and Valentina picked it together in the summer before Mum was born; Valentina dried it out above Mum’s
cot . . . And, and . . .’ Isobel twisted in her seat. ‘What else is there, Legs?’

‘The lucky leaf,’ Allegra murmured, not looking up.

‘Oh yes! He caught lucky leaves too! He put one in a little leather booklet because he said sometimes you need luck on your side.’ Isobel joshed him with her arm. ‘See? You
always thought I was just making it up, but that’s where it comes from!’

Lloyd rubbed her thigh. ‘I shall never doubt you again.’

‘Wait till you see him, Lloyd. He looks just like . . .’ She wrinkled her nose, clicking her fingers. ‘Oh! What’s Pinocchio’s dad called?’

‘Geppetto.’

‘Right. He looks just like him. Little white moustache and twinkly eyes. And he was the one who made the cuckoo clock too. That was why Granny took it: another thing for Mum to have from
her dad. Isn’t that sweet? Plus he still lives in the same house he was born in. All his life in one place – can you imagine?’ After leaving Lars, they had just had time for tea
together in the apartment Timo shared with Nikolai, Noemie and Leysa before leaving for the airport.

‘Not really.’

‘I mean, it’s tiny. Just a room above the shop really, but so homely, you know? And he made all the furniture. Ha! Linley eat your heart out!’

Allegra wondered whether her sister was going to take a breath before they reached the river.

‘So did he never marry, then?’ Lloyd asked, swinging them off the Hammersmith flyover and down towards Fulham.

‘No, he did, but not till twelve years later. He said he used to go up the mountains all the time trying to find Valentina, but eventually, you know . . . He had to move on with his
life.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s really sad. His wife died four years ago and now he lives in the apartment with his son Nikolai, Nik’s wife, Leysa, and their daughter, Noemie.
She’s seventeen . . . She is seventeen, isn’t she?’ Isobel twisted in her seat again. ‘Legs? Legs, what is it?’

Allegra blinked back at her, the newspaper flat against her lap where she’d dropped it. ‘Glencore’s gone up thirty-nine per cent today.’

‘Glencore?’ Isobel paused, concentrating hard. ‘Oh, that’s the company I told you about, isn’t it?’

‘And I told Pierre.’

Lloyd glanced back at her in the rear-view mirror, getting the gist immediately, as Isobel’s mouth dropped open – even she understood what that meant.

‘Legs, bacon sarnie?’ Isobel called across the kitchen.

‘Huh? Uh, no. No, thanks.’ Allegra shook her head, her nose almost to the TV screen as she watched the footage again, the twentieth time in an hour, of Pierre being led to a patrol
car in handcuffs, flashbulbs popping.

A sandwich was thrust in front of her nose. ‘Eat. You are no use to anyone dead on my kitchen floor.’

‘Uh . . .’ She accepted it obediently. Took a bite obediently. Chewed obediently.

As soon as Isobel walked back to the worktop, she put it down.

‘Legs!’ Isobel said in a warning voice, her back still turned as she shook the ketchup bottle.

‘Sorry.’ She picked up the sandwich and took another bite, but it was like chewing sawdust.

The producers cut back to the presenters in the studio, all sitting in bright colours with bright smiles as they discussed again the very serious charges and failures in risk control that had
allowed the trades to happen. But it didn’t matter how many times they said them, or rearranged the words – ‘arrested . . . billions . . . liquidity squeeze . . .
whistle-blower’ – they always led to just one meaning: insider trading.

Allegra had been flicking through the various twenty-four-hour news channels since the story had broken, devouring the details with macabre intensity.

‘I can’t believe he thought he’d get away with it,’ Isobel said, glancing over at her as she cut her sandwich in half.

‘Desperation,’ Allegra murmured, her own sandwich forgotten again in her hands.

‘Greedy bastard, more like. He was arrogant enough to think he’d covered all the angles, but anyone with half a brain could see the timings were too tight.’ She picked up her
sandwich and took a bite, leaning against the worktop as she scrolled through her texts.

‘Mmmm . . .’ Allegra replied, her eyes on a still image of her own office building. ‘Wait . . . What?’

‘Huh?’

‘You said the timings were too tight.’

‘Yeah, a second between the trades? I mean, come on! Even I know you can’t input something that quickly.’ Isobel rolled her eyes, her hand over her mouth as she talked and ate
at the same time.

Allegra stared at her. ‘What timings are you talking about?’

Isobel swallowed, her eyes glancing at the screen. ‘They said about the timings on there, didn’t they?’

‘No. They haven’t released any operational information whatsoever. The press don’t have access to that kind of information yet.’ Allegra’s eyes narrowed as she
stood up. ‘Where did you hear about the timings?’

‘Nowhere.’ But she had put her phone behind her back.

‘Iz—’ Allegra said in a warning voice, advancing towards her and holding out her hand. ‘Give it.’

‘There’s nothing—’

‘Now!’

Isobel shook her head, but Allegra reached round and snatched the phone from her hands anyway. Massi had signed off with a line of kisses and a smiley face.

Her jaw dropped. ‘I told you not to call him!’ Allegra shrieked, realizing in a flash the ‘mole’.

‘No, you told me not to tell him where we were staying in Zermatt and I didn’t. But we’re home now.’ She gave a feeble shrug. ‘And technically I didn’t
call.’

‘Texting is the same thing and you know it,’ Allegra muttered furiously as she flicked through their lengthy correspondence. Half of it was her sister commiserating as he and Zhou
tried to work out an escape plan from the arranged marriage. But the other half . . .

She looked up at Isobel with a furious glare.

‘Legs, I had to give him some kind of explanation about why we left! Sam freaked when they got back and we weren’t there, and obviously
you
weren’t picking up his
calls. Massi just wanted to know we were all right and to find out what was going on. I told him what happened in the pool with Syria and how that meant I had to tell you about the merger and then
you went off to warn Pierre. I never told him where we were staying.’

Allegra’s head tipped sharply. ‘Sam knew I’d told Pierre about the merger?’

‘I guess. So?’

Allegra looked back at the screen. Whistle-blower.

‘Look, Legs, I know you’re mad with him, but you’ve got to speak to Sam. Massi says you only know half the story. Sam was on to Pierre weeks ago apparently.’

‘How?’ she asked in a brittle tone. What had Sam seen that she’d missed?

‘You were right. It is something to do with the charity guy in Syria.’

‘Leo Besakovitch?’

‘Yeah, him. He got wind of the rumours and wanted to know how exposed he’d been to more bad investments. Sam went back over the trades and saw a load going from his fund into the . .
. home thingy . . . ?’

‘You mean the house account? The firm’s money?’

‘That’s it. But they all happened at weird hours, Sam hadn’t authorized them, and the trades had your initials on.’

‘
Mine?
’ Allegra felt weak. No . . .

‘That’s why he came over. Zhou’s dad was having talks with Gleneagles anyway, and he agreed to have a couple of meetings with you, pretending to want to invest. Apparently it
worked for him because it took any attention away from his real meetings and it meant Sam could get in on the deal and start finding out what was going on.’

‘That’s why Yong said he didn’t want to work with a woman,’ Allegra said sharply, things beginning to fall into place.

Isobel shrugged. ‘I don’t know. This is just what Massi told me. He said Sam realized almost immediately it wasn’t you. One of the trades happened overnight in Zurich,
apparently, when he’d been with you himself.’ Her eyebrow raised up suggestively, as though half expecting an explanation from Allegra, although she wasn’t so foolish as to ask.
Not now, anyway.

‘At any rate, it meant if it wasn’t you, it had to be someone with access to your login. So he got one of your analysts to help.’

Allegra inhaled sharply. Bob?

‘And they traced the . . . you know, the computer routes . . .’

‘IP addresses?’

‘Yes, those! Back to – guess where? Pierre’s offices. Massi says that’s why Sam goaded Pierre at that dinner. He said you wouldn’t give up trying to get the deal,
so he had to get you to quit somehow, because then, if the trades happened and you’d left the company . . .’ She arched an eyebrow.

Allegra wasn’t sure which was more incredible: that Pierre had gone to such lengths to destroy her or that Sam had gone to such lengths to save her.

She looked away, feeling the ground tip and rock like a ship in the ocean as clarity dawned, the game revealed at last. Pierre had been setting her up. And the only way for Sam to save her
career had been to destroy it. She remembered Sam’s anger when he’d seen her in Zermatt, Zhou going off-plan as he tried to assuage his guilt about Amy and drew Allegra back into the
game again.

All the other tiny discrepancies that had seemed odd but insignificant rushed back in a swarm too: the Lindover slip-up in the meeting that told her he’d been prying, her phone opened onto
Pierre’s message when she woke on Monday morning after he’d walked her home, not her bare back but her files accessible to him after she’d entered her passcode in front of him
when she’d brought up her diary, Bob’s phone call on the slopes . . .