MONEY TREE (42 page)

‘Warwick?’

He looked up and saw Charlie Easterhouse standing in the doorway that led into the conference room. He’d come in without knocking. Charlie looked as tired as death. His fat body hung like a sack of potatoes from a frame that was bowed down with care and despondency. Behind were the others.

‘Warwick, we
want to meet with you.’ It wasn’t a request.

Easterhouse turned and shuffled
back down the short corridor. Warwick noted that they didn’t expect him not to comply. He gritted his teeth and forced himself erect. His whole body shook and swayed. Sweat broke on his brow and poured down his back. For a moment he thought he’d pass out. Then it passed. He was left weak. He bit his knuckle to stop himself screaming with the pain.

He began to put one foot in front of the other and
shambled through to the conference room. He took up his usual seat at the end of the oval table. Cool air from the balcony played over him. He studied them. Easterhouse, Schmidt, Nightingale and Kubala. The four executives looked exhausted to the point of keeling over. How must he look? They sat slumped in their chairs looking at him with something approaching surprise and curiosity. Well, he hadn’t fallen over yet, and he wasn’t about to let this bunch of spineless bastards see him on his knees.

‘Give me an update.’ He barked. The men stared at him as though they found it funny. ‘I said let’s go. Where have we got to? Is this bank start
ing up today or not?!’

The men looked at each other, then Charlie spoke. It was a tired voice but one with an edge to it.

‘Warwick, this bank is fucked. There is nothing – I mean not a damned thing – that can be done to breathe life into this organisation.’ He waved Warwick quiet to pre-empt an outburst. ‘But that’s not why we’re here. We want simple answers. Have you seen this web site?’

‘Yeah, it’s shit! Absolute shit! This hacking crew have done a real job on us.’

‘Warwick, didn’t you see the report from Delhi? Erin Wishart leading the opposition?! Aaron, have we got any juice?’ Aaron Schmidt was sitting with a portable computer in his lap. ‘Enough.’ He directed a cordless mouse at the screen on the wall. It came to life and Schmidt fingered the keyboard to bring up on the wall screen the web site itself.

‘We want to talk about this.’

‘Well I don’t! This is all shit and I’m not going to waste my time on this or you!’

‘Warwick, you’d better. You’d just fucking better wa
ste some fucking time on this!’

Kubala’s voice was a shout. It was full of an anger Warwick had never suspected from him. Warwick waved a hand and slouched in his seat. They began to pace through the menu, opening up documents and recordings. They dealt first with the attacks on the People’s Bank. The chronology led from the earliest efforts of Warwick to close it down, through to conversations with Nick Trevino during the onslaughts on their rival.   

‘So this wasn’t just any old bunch of hackers, was it Warwick? This was the People’s Bank fighting back?’ asked Charlie quietly.

Warwick h
ad had enough. He was seething. The craving was devouring him alive.

‘What the fuck else did you expect me to do? Don’t tell me you didn’t know
we were going on the offensive? I told you yellow-bellied scum a year ago that this bank was eating our lunch!’

Kubala’s fine black features were twisting with anger. ‘Mister, if you call me a name one more time, so help me!’

‘Leave it, Abe.’

Charlie leaned over to motion him down. His voice began to take on the fury that he felt. The loss of all those years defending this man. The family life he’d given up.

‘Abraham’s right though. We’re tired of the bully-boy stuff, Warwick, so just cut it out. What we’re trying to get at here is the truth, so we know what the hell we do next. And it seems that the truth is, there was no hacking crew out there. Not till you started the war! You never thought they’d hit back did you?’ he asked ruminatively.

‘Just like us, Warwick!’ Marcus Nightingale was pointing at him, accusing, angered beyond words. His heavy face was livid and blotchy.

Schmidt moved them on to the next topic. It was the Yeardon dossier. The atmosphere had long shifted from despair and incredulity to outrage. Warwick wasn’t hearing them. He had pulled himself into a ball upright in his chair and was staring into his own small hell. They were half way through the tape recordings when Kubala got up and walked over to Warwick and stuck his face an inch away from the other’s.

‘You little shit!
You’re not even listening to us! You’ve screwed this bank. You’ve ruined all of us! We’re finished, and we deserve to be, for letting you get away with this. Erin Wishart’s got more balls than all of us put together! I’m ashamed of myself. I’m ashamed for all of us. We’re going to go down with you, Stanstead, and we deserve to.’

Warwick broke from his trance. Rage distorted his face.

‘Get your greasy black face out of mine!’

He
pushed Kubala back and uncurled from his chair. He stood at the end of the table, crouched like he was ready to fight them. It brought the others to their feet. He snarled at them.

‘I’m not listening to any more of this
spineless shit. None of you had the guts to face up to me before. And now when it gets tough you’re wetting your fucking pants! Look at you! A bunch of second rate, little shits with fancy houses in the Hamptons, and fancy cars, and fancy expense accounts, and fancy kids at fancy schools. You and your fancy little wives –
white
wives - would have been nothing, nothing without me! I made you. I handed out those big fat bonuses. And now you’re going to have give it all back. You’ll be back to nothing. Back to being jellyfish! You make me vomit!’

Stanstead’s face was contorted with contempt.
The tableau stayed frozen for what seemed like a minute. Kubala straightened up, looked across at Nightingale and nodded. The two men moved forward and grabbed Stanstead by the upper arms. Behind them, the other two unfroze and stepped forward. They bent and snatched him by the knees and lower leg. They lifted, and the stunned figure of Warwick Stanstead began to wriggle.

‘Put me down you motherfu
ckers! What the fuck is this?!’

He was kicking and tossing his body around, but the four men held him tightly. They
stumbled onto the balcony. Stanstead was ranting and swearing as he realised what was happening. He threw himself even harder against the restraints, but these men were strengthened by shame and wrath.

They were near the edge of the balcony.
They thrust his head out over the parapet. His shoulders wriggled on the guard rail. Suddenly Warwick’s body slumped, and for a moment, taken by surprise, the men almost dropped him. Then the two front men hoisted him up and pushed his upper body out into space. Stanstead’s hands gripped the rail and his eyes were staring, but not at them.

‘I can’t do this,’ said Abraham Kubala.

‘Me neither,’ replied Charlie Easterhouse.

The men pulled
in Stanstead’s limp body and laid him gently down on the soft grass. They stepped back, staring at their fallen leader. Stanstead’s eyes flickered and cleared. He took a deep shuddering breath and got to his knees. Then with all his remaining strength, and fighting the terrible gravity of his leaden limbs, he battled to his feet. He glared at them, eyes full of derision. He wiped the spittle from his mouth.

‘True to the last. All of you. You didn’t even have
the guts to do this, did you.’

He
pointed his finger at each one of their slumped chests in turn.

‘It was always me, wasn’t it. I had to wipe your asses. I had to take all the risks. Right?! Well this is how you do it.’

He turned, took hold of the rail and with his former athlete’s skill, leapt up and balanced with a foot on either side of the rail. He raised his arms high above his head, brought his trailing foot over to the outside, and steadied himself. The men behind were glued.

He bent his knees slightly, then sprung forward in a perfectly executed swallow dive. The four men rushed to the rail and looked down. They saw his dive position change. Saw his limbs buffeted by the increasing wind of his descent. Then his body took a new shape. He began to make pumping movements with its arms and legs. In his mind, Warwick Stanstead wasn’t falling, he was running.    

A
week later and the small plane roared down the runway and tipped up into the air. The great sprawl of Delhi eddied below them and was gone. They banked and turned south and Ted turned to Erin and asked,

‘Why didn’t we
travel like this before?’

‘Because Meera thought it would be good
for our pampered Western souls?’

They landed at Bh
opal airport and with their newfound insouciance at travelling in India, batted off the beggars and touts. Outside, waving from the running board of her battered Land Rover, stood Meera. They embraced and were off down the road towards Chandapur in a buzz of excited conversation, catching up on events since the demonstration a week ago.

‘How’s Anila?’
Erin was the first to ask. ‘Did the paperwork do the trick?’

‘You will soon see. Ask her yourself.’ Meera smiled at her in her driver’s mirror.

Ted broke in, ‘But we’re still worried about Oscar. We’ve heard nothing since the big night.’

‘Isn’t he just lying low? Didn’t you say the FBI was going to take some persuading?’ Meera asked.

‘That might be it. I wouldn’t blame him for steering clear till things settled down some. Joey swears on his mother’s life that they hadn’t found him, far less harmed him.’

‘Not that we believe any of Joey’s claims about having a mother,’ called out
Erin from the back.  

‘Joey?’ asked Meera.

‘Joey Kutzov. Stanstead’s hit man.’ He turned to Erin. ‘But he did deliver Veronica Yeardon.’

‘Only to save his lizard skin.’

This time there was no pretence about fetching water. The women squatted on their heels under the neem trees in small groups, knees tenting their
saris. They were chattering excitedly. There was much to be excited about. First there had been the huge row in front of Anila’s hut a week ago. That horrible mother and her lazy son had met their match in Anila’s new friend from the bank. They had been left spluttering in the dust as Anila and her daughter had sailed off to Delhi in the wonderful jeep. Anila’s mother had simply barricaded herself inside the hut till the pair of them were hoarse shouting at her closed front door. They’d stomped off to stay with the only friend they had in the village – a distant relative – to wait for Anila to come back.

And the next thing, there is Anila Jhabvala and her daughter on television! What was happening to the world? The whole village had shut down for the day until everyone had a chance to see the hourly news shows with Anila telling the whole country about this wonderful bank of hers. Her mother-in-law and sweaty husband had hardly known what to do. Anila’s fame was burning a hole in the fat
husband’s soul. But Anila’s importance meant that she had to have even more money than they thought. Anger and avarice wrestled for control.

Two days later everyone saw the jeep coming from miles away, and the mother and son took up position outside Anila’s hut, standing and holding hands. The jeep bounced up the lane and
rocked to a halt sending a last cloud of dust over the two waiting figures. Meera climbed out, holding a briefcase, and walked confidently round to meet the Jhabvalas. Anila followed, sheltering behind Meera’s upright figure. Aastha sat in the car to watch. From both ends of the lane, villagers began to crowd round to see the fun.

Dilip’s
mother was the first to speak.

‘So you have come back, have you. With your fanc
y car and your important friend.’

Dilip jabbed his finger at
Anila. ‘- and you think you are important now too, don’t you, wife of mine!’

Meera
put her arm round Anila’s shoulders, and replied.

‘But Mr Jhabvala,
Anila tells me you divorced her. You threw her and her daughter out of your home.’

‘Well, that was to teach her a lesson. I did not officially divorce her. She still belongs to me.’

‘I see, then you must listen to what we have to say.’

Dilip’s mother raised an accusatory finger to Anila
‘No, we are not listening to what you have to say. Who are you anyway, miss high and mighty. Our business is with that person there!’

Meera moved her body in front of Anila.

‘I am Anila’s lawyer, and I think you had better listen to what I have to say.’

That stilled them. It was of course an embellishment; her degree was in business law and she wasn’t actually a practising lawyer. But it held enough of the truth for Meera to sound convincing. Looks of
unease were filling their faces. Meera grabbed the initiative. From inside her briefcase she drew out a slim sheaf of papers. She separated them into two sets and gave one set to Anila. She took two steps towards the pair, causing them to flinch. She held out the papers.