Fatal Error (15 page)

Guy and I worked on in angry silence. Of course, Owen was working in silence too, but there was nothing new in that. The tension crowded in on us in the small flat, hovering over the dining table we all shared as a desk.

Determined to make up for the previous evening’s failure, I sent our plan to the three venture capitalists I had met,
including Henry. I took some time over his covering letter. I toyed with elaborate excuses as to why I had suddenly discovered a need for funding the day after I had told him I didn’t have one, before settling on the truth, which sounded better anyway. He just hadn’t looked as if he wanted to hear yet another elevator pitch.

I looked up the British Venture Capital Association website, found three more likely names and sent the plan off to each of them.

Now all I could do was wait and see.

‘Coffee?’ asked Guy, after an hour or so of silence.

‘Please,’ I said.

He returned a couple of minutes later with a mug. ‘I’m sorry I jumped on you like that,’ he said. ‘I know you tried your best.’ He smiled a smile that said ‘friends again?’ and was impossible to resist.

‘No, you’re right. You probably should have gone. You’d have done better than me.’

‘Next time.’ He sipped his coffee. I was pleased that the tension had eased a little. We just didn’t have the room for it.

‘Bet you can’t guess who else I saw last night?’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Mel.’

‘Mel Dean?’

‘That’s the only Mel I know.’

‘Well, well,’ Guy said. ‘There’s a memory. What does she look like? Has she changed much?’

‘She’s aged a bit.’

‘Don’t they all? What about those lovely breasts?’

‘They’re in great shape.’

‘That’s good to know. They always were fine specimens.’

‘She’s still a lawyer,’ I said. ‘Apparently she does a lot of work with internet start-ups. I’ve just faxed her our
shareholders’ agreement. Remember I was unhappy with it?’

‘You faxed it to Mel?’

‘She said she’d take a quick look and come back to me.’

‘Waste of time.’

‘We’ll see,’ I said, feeling the irritation rising again and successfully controlling it.

It wasn’t a waste of time. Mel called back late that afternoon, ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘I think there are some real problems with that document. It would do fine for a small business with only a couple of shareholders. But for something that’s going to grow into a venture-funded company, it’s a disaster.’

‘Oh. You mean it’s not scalable,’ I said, remembering some Owenspeak.

She laughed. ‘Precisely,’ she said. ‘I see you’ve learned the lingo.’

‘Some of it. Is it something we can change later on, when we get a bit more money?’

‘You could, but it would be messy. Much better to start off with a proper structure.’

‘Could you draw up a better one?’

‘Certainly. I’d have to see the other company documents. And I’d probably have to charge you.’

‘What do you think about working with Guy?’ I asked as quietly as I could.

There was silence for quite a time. In the end she spoke. ‘You are,’ she said.

‘That’s true.’

‘And are you happy with it?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘OK. If it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me.’

‘All right. Let me talk to him. I’ll call you back in a couple of minutes.’

‘Now that’s what I call a short decision time,’ Mel said.

I hung up and turned to Guy.

‘I heard most of that,’ he said.

‘Our shareholders’ agreement stinks.’

‘Says Mel?’

‘Says Mel.’

‘Do you believe her?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you think we should do?’

‘I think we should get rid of the other lot and hire her.’

Guy snorted. ‘But it’s Mel, for God’s sake! She’s an airhead. Everybody knows that.’

‘She was pretty bright at school, I seem to remember. She just acted like an airhead.’

‘Well, she fooled me.’

‘Obviously.’

Guy sighed. ‘Are you sure about this?’

I nodded.

We were a team. Shareholders’ agreements were more my thing than his thing. Suddenly it was very important to me that he showed he understood that.

He paused. Thought. Then smiled.

‘Call her.’

Guy finally pinned Torsten down. He flew to Hamburg for a late-afternoon meeting that would slip into a night out. All part of the plan.

I met him at City Airport the next morning. I spotted him coming through Arrivals. He looked tired after the previous evening’s excesses, but he was grinning.

‘He said yes?’

‘Not quite, but close enough.’

‘What do you mean “not quite”? Did he say yes or didn’t he?’

‘Calm down, Davo. Everything’s cool. He likes the deal. He likes it a lot. But he’d be investing money from the family trusts. And that means his father has to agree.’

‘How likely is that?’

‘Torsten says he’ll have no trouble.’

‘I hope Torsten is right. How much are we talking about?’

‘Five million Deutschmarks.’

‘That’ll do.’ Five million marks was just under two million quid. Not quite as much as we had hoped for, but enough to get us going. ‘That’ll do very well.’

Guy’s smile broadened. ‘Shall we see if we can get a bottle of champagne somewhere in this airport?’

Now it looked like the money was on the way, Guy was anxious to gear up. I wasn’t so sure. I remembered Torsten from school. He was flaky then and he was probably flaky now. But Guy’s view was that that was a risk we would have to take. And if Torsten didn’t come through we might still have some luck with the half-dozen venture capitalists who now had our business plan.

Guy persuaded me. I knew I had to change my whole attitude to risk. At this stage in Ninetyminutes’ life, we had to take risks, not avoid them.

We started recruiting. We wanted a head of merchandising to set up the on-line retailing. Owen and Gaz each needed help. We were also looking for an office to put everyone in. There wasn’t room for Gaz in the flat in Wapping, so he was working from Hemel Hempstead and communicating with us by e-mail. This was asking for trouble, especially once our team grew bigger. So the office search began.

Mel came through with a new shareholders’ agreement and some amendments to our articles of association. She decided to deliver them in person to the flat in Wapping. I was surprised when I opened the door for her to see that
she had dyed her hair blonde. She also wasn’t quite as severely dressed as she had been when I had bumped into her at First Tuesday.

‘Very nice,’ I said, wondering whether the new look was for Guy’s benefit.

‘Thank you. I knew I had to do something, but I couldn’t quite face going to your lengths.’

‘It’s due for another trim soon,’ I said, running my fingers through my hair, which was now almost half an inch long.

‘Hello, Guy,’ she said quietly as she entered the living-room-cum-office.

‘Mel! Great to see you! Davo says you’re just the lawyer we need. And we get a personal delivery service.’ He rushed over and kissed both her cheeks. She glowed.

‘I make it a point to see my clients face-to-face.’

‘Good. I’d show you around the office, but this is it. That’s Owen over there. Wave to the nice lady, Owen.’

Owen raised a hand while not moving his eyes from the screen.

‘Here you are, David,’ Mel said, taking an envelope out of her briefcase. ‘I think you’ll find these an improvement on the old documents.’ I took them.

‘Do you want a cup of tea or something?’ I asked.

Mel hesitated, glanced at Guy and then looked at her watch. ‘No, I’ve got a meeting in the West End. I’d better be off now.’

‘I thought you said she’d gone grey,’ Guy said as Mel shut the door.

‘That was last week.’

‘You were right about her chest.’

‘I thought you said you’d given up women?’

‘Yeah, but it’s only Mel. That was a bit odd. It’s a long way to come just to stay for two minutes. She could have sent the papers by courier.’

‘Mm,’ I said.

‘Never mind. As long as she’s a good lawyer.’

She was. The new documents all made perfect sense to me. Since Torsten hadn’t signed the original papers yet I had the new ones couriered to Hamburg. Guy wasn’t concerned by the lack of communication from Torsten, but I nagged him into chasing him up. We needed to know for sure that the cash was there before we moved into a new office and put more people on the payroll. Guy had no success. Torsten was out of town until the following week.

We had some luck with recruitment. The media were beginning to notice the dot-com wave and people wanted to ride it. Gaz brought on board a young sports journalist called Neil from a regional newspaper in the Midlands. Owen somehow found someone whom he would deign to work with, Sanjay, a football-mad programmer. We signed up Amy Kessler to be Head of Merchandising. She was a friend of a friend of Guy’s, an American MBA who had worked for Adidas in Germany for a couple of years. She seemed frighteningly competent.

Guy and I realized we had too many chiefs and no Indians, and so I gave my old secretary at Gurney Kroheim a call. Actually, she wasn’t exactly my secretary, she was more of a general dogsbody for about eight people. She was an Australian woman called Michelle. I had been impressed with her attention to detail and her cheerfulness. Although we weren’t friends, I had always been careful to treat her with respect, something that most of my colleagues in the new Leipziger Gurney Kroheim hadn’t done. When I told her what we were looking for at ninetyminutes.com she jumped at the chance, even though it meant a significant cut in salary.

We found an office. It was in Britton Street in Clerkenwell. Plenty of other dot-com companies were springing up in the neighbourhood; there were four other start-ups in our
building alone. Importantly for us, the internet access was excellent. But the best part was that we could move in immediately. Which was good, because we needed somewhere to put our new recruits.

My father phoned me.

‘You haven’t cashed my cheque.’

‘No, Dad.’

‘Why not?’

I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t think ninetyminutes.com is a good investment for you.’

He was not impressed. ‘I should be the judge of that.’

‘I know, but … Look, how much have you got saved beyond this fifty thousand?’

‘That’s none of your business. Now please cash my cheque. I’ve always trusted you, David; now it’s time for you to trust me.’

I hesitated, weighing it up. I was right; this was a bad place to put his retirement nest egg. But he was right; I should trust him. And things were really rolling. Of course, I couldn’t guarantee ninetyminutes.com would succeed, I wasn’t even certain we would get our initial funding, but I did feel good about it. And my father wasn’t looking for guarantees.

I sighed. ‘OK, Dad, if you’re positive about this. I’ll cash the cheque this afternoon. Thank you.’

‘Thank
you
’, he said. ‘And good luck. I’m counting on you.’

‘I know.’

I put down the phone with the nagging feeling that I had just made a big mistake.

16

July 1987, Côte D’Azur, France

I stood at the front door as the police car carrying Guy drove out of the courtyard, followed by Tony in his Jeep. I heard rapid footsteps on the stairs. A moment later Mel and Ingrid joined me, wearing the T-shirts they had been sleeping in.

‘What’s happened?’ Mel asked.

‘They’ve arrested him.’

‘Guy?’

I nodded.

‘Oh, my God!’ She put her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. Another shock. I wasn’t sure how many more she could bear.

I described Guy’s arrest.

‘I can’t believe they’ve taken him,’ she said. ‘David, you must tell them they’ve made a mistake.’

‘I can try. I’m sure he is innocent. But I doubt Inspector Sauville will take my word for it.’

‘But what possible reason could they have for suspecting him?’

‘They must have found a footprint somewhere,’ Ingrid said, ‘Guy’s footprint.’

‘If they have, I’m sure there’s an explanation,’ I said. ‘After all, why would he kill Dominique?’

‘There’s no reason why he’d kill her,’ said Mel fiercely. ‘It’s that scumbag Tony. It must be.’ She collapsed into a chair and began to weep, gently at first and then in earnest, huge sobs wracking her shoulders.

Ingrid shot me an anguished glance and put an arm round her. Mel was cracking up. I couldn’t blame her, but there was little I could do to help. Ingrid led her outside to the terrace. Miguel had heard the commotion, and a couple of minutes later he materialized with breakfast.

Then Owen appeared, bleary eyed. ‘What’s the fuss?’ he asked, picking up a croissant and stuffing it into his mouth.

I told him.

He stopped chewing in mid-mouthful and stared at me, as though unable to comprehend what I had just said. ‘Shit,’ he whispered at last.

‘I’m sure they’ll let him go soon,’ I said. After all, Owen was Guy’s younger brother and I thought he deserved some words of comfort.

Owen ignored them. ‘Why did they arrest him?’

‘I think it might have something to do with a footprint.’ I described again Sauville’s visit.

‘Shit,’ Owen repeated. He looked anxious, almost panicked. His reaction was nothing like the sullen indifference he had displayed when his father had been interviewed at the police station. But then I knew how strongly he cared about his brother.

‘They’ll let him go,’ Mel said, her face damp with tears. ‘They’ve got to let him go.’

Owen glared at her. ‘What do you care, you slut?’

She just looked at him. Stricken with shame and self-loathing, she couldn’t answer.

‘Owen!’ I snapped. ‘There’s no need for that!’

Owen scowled and disappeared back indoors.

It was a long morning. I sat on the terrace and took refuge in
War and Peace
: past page 900 and going strong. Ingrid read her own book next to me and Mel withdrew to her room to lie down. And cry, no doubt.

It was eerily peaceful in the garden, with the quiet
disturbed only by the competing hums of the bees in the lavender and the distant traffic a long way beneath us. No sign of Guy. Or Tony. Or the police. The action was all going on down there, in that scruffy police station in Beaulieu.