Surrogate – a psychological thriller (2 page)

"Has anybody spoken to Sir Ronald?" I said. "Is he aware of what's happened?"

"As acting chief executive, it's up to you to make the call," said Rosenthal drily.

"Fine," I said, determined not to be rattled. I reached for the phone in the centre of the table. "I'll wake him up."

I punched in Dad's home number and listened to the dialling tone. After four or five rings, Eliska's sleepy voice answered.

"Eliska, it's Hugo. May I speak to my father, please?"

There was mumbling in the background, and I pictured their bedroom in Berkshire with the dialysis machine next to the bed. My father's voice came out over the speakerphone.

"Do you have any idea what fucking time it is?" he said.

"Dad, you're on speakerphone. I'm in the boardroom with Brian and Nigel. We've had some bad news."

I found myself standing up as I went over our predicament. How many times in the past had I felt my kneecaps dissolve as Dad eviscerated me in this very room over the loudspeaker? There were moments when the boardroom had felt like Hitler's bunker, with the generals glancing nervously at each other while the Führer raged. This time, however, there was silence. What I couldn't understand was why Dad had gone ahead and reinsured Dutch Marquez on our own, ignoring the usual protocols. Then again, you could never underestimate how rapacious Dad was when it came to money. He was like a shark in that he had to keep moving, always searching for the next deal. For him, the deal was the thing; I don't think he had ever had a self-reflective moment in his life.

Finally Dad said, "Well, there's no choice, is there? We'll have to go out to our investors and get the money from them."

I turned to Rosenthal, who was listening intently with his fingers steepled. "Nigel, you're going to have to be the one who writes to them. How will this go down?"

"We only called on them last year to help us mop up the damage from Hurricane Nora," Rosenthal said. "In my opinion, this is going to wipe out many of them completely. Some are going to lose everything."

The gloom in the room deepened.

Ronnie's voice came over the speakerphone. "If God had not meant them to be sheared, he would not have made them sheep."

Things changed after the loss of the Dutch Marquez. Letters went out to our private investors demanding cheques to make up the loss. Of course, there was a gnashing of teeth and howls of outrage. Many investors regarded Berkshire RE as a cash machine that paid out money automatically, just a cheque dropping onto their hall carpet once a year. One man wrote to me saying he felt like we were subjecting him to an operation without anaesthetic. Although their exposure was capped at a million pounds each, for some it would mean selling their home. That made me feel bad. Dad kept telling me that they should have read the small print, that the investors knew what they were getting into.

"So they don't go skiing this year," Dad said with a shrug. Most people became Lloyd's Names out of snobbery, he said, so he didn't have much sympathy for them.

We managed to keep the story out of the papers, thank God, although I did hear about one poor unfortunate who killed himself. That sent a shiver down my spine. I convinced myself that anyone who did something like that must have had psychiatric problems that had nothing to do with us.

Things changed in my personal life as well. Currie would call me up, telling me what was planned for the weekend, and I would listen patiently and then demur. The idea of picking up some girl in a nightclub and then taking her back to my flat to watch her coo as she fingered the soft furnishings had lost its appeal. Perhaps I was getting older. I was ready for something else, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. Since the loss of the Dutch Marquez, I was often the last person in the office at night, hunched over my computer, trying to make amends, while the cleaner pushed her vacuum cleaner around.

More than a hundred oil workers lost their lives that night, although nobody was clear about what had started the fire. Perhaps something as random as a spark igniting an oily rag. Part of the job was to supply supporting evidence to the government inquiry gearing up. Then back to what the estate agent had called my "luxury penthouse apartment" when she first showed me around the gated development. Most evenings would end with me falling asleep in front of the telly with a greasy takeaway carton and a half-empty bottle of wine on the coffee table. I was waiting for something deeper, something that had value.

Well, my life did change, but not in the way I expected. In hindsight, I wish I could return to the moment when the telephone rang on my desk. That was the point when everything in my life turned upside down, but you can never go back, can you?

"Hello, Hugo Cox," I said distractedly, still reading the email that had popped into my in-box.

"Wuh-low," said Currie on the other end of the phone. It was a silly made-up way of talking we shared, a hangover from public school.

"Oh, hey, Rupert," I said, relaxing into my chair. "What's up? How can I help you?"

"I wanted to remind you about tonight's party. The one at Tate Modern. I'll meet you in the foyer at eight."

"What party?" I said, genuinely nonplussed. I felt a creeping realisation that he’d told me weeks ago about an event his company was sponsoring.

"Oh, I can't come. Work pressure, I'm afraid." I reached for the usual excuse.

"You have got to come. You promised. I've already told my boss you're coming. He wants to meet you." Currie's wealth-management firm was just down the road. "Anyway, it'll be fun. Champagne. Pretty girls. You know what these art openings are like, matey – wall to wall pussy."

Laughing despite myself, I saw I had no option but to give in. "Okay, okay give me the address," I said, picking up my pen.

I went back home, changed and decided whether to shave or not. I turned my face in the bathroom mirror: Hugo Cox, thirty-five, the only son of City financier Sir Ronnie Cox, did not look too bad in the unforgiving bathroom light. I ran my fingers over my stubble and decided I could get away with it for just one night.

Putting on another Gieves & Hawkes suit, I picked my car keys up off the hall table and took the lift down to the garage.

How a relationship will end is there right at the moment of first meeting. The signs are all there, it's just that you don't know how to recognise them.

The first time I saw Emily Givings, she was trapped behind a turnstile trying to get in to Tate Modern. What I noticed was that she was startlingly pretty: short blond hair cut in a diagonal as sharp as a sports car. She was talking to a security guard, and I was admiring her clinging silver lamé dress and black fur bomber jacket (borrowed, I later found out, from a girlfriend for the night) when I felt Currie's hand on my shoulder. "Oo-hoo," he called in my ear. "Come on, matey, the party's on the third floor."

Currie's wealth-management company, Foresight Investments, was sponsoring tonight's event, a private view of a retrospective of British artists from the nineties – people like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. To be honest, I didn't know much about art. In the event flyer, I read that tonight’s opening conveyed the message that Foresight, too, was the Best of British. I wondered how much the evening was costing them.

The lift doors opened onto a crush of people. Lots of arty-looking types wearing black, while the City boys wore pinstripe suits. Currie went off in search of drinks, and I squeezed through to the balcony to look down over the vast turbine room, recognising underwriters and brokers we did business with. I then wandered around with a fixed grin on my face saying hello to a few people. Who was it that said parties are a form of suicide? After a while I'd had enough and looked at my watch. It was still early. I wasn't quite ready to go back home to my takeaway kebab and bottle of plonk, so I reckoned I’d have a quick look at the art. At the back of my mind was also the thought of seeing that girl again.

People wandered around the paintings in a murmurous hush. One gallery featured Emin's sluttish unmade bed, with condoms and gin bottles and fag packets spilling out of it. The Damien Hirst shark, trapped in murky water, occupied the middle of another. I wondered how long the shark would take to decompose and whether you could insure against a risk like that when I felt a presence beside me.

"It reminds me of some of the people next door," the pretty blonde said, glancing towards the gallery entrance. The party outside was still going strong.

"They haven't sensed blood in the water yet. If they do, there'll be a feeding frenzy. No, this shark reminds me of my father."

"Why do you say that?"

"Sharks have to keep moving, don't they? Dad and I work together, but he'll never retire. The moment he stops moving, he dies."

The girl took a sip of her Prosecco and looked at me over the glass.

"So, what brings you here?" I continued. "Are you one of Foresight’s wealthy clients?" I smiled to show I was teasing.

"Oh no, I'm in the art world. I work for a gallery in Mayfair. We represent one of the artists in the show."

"So, is there much money in the art business?"

"You know what they say, 'What do you need to make a small fortune in the art world?'" I must have looked blank because she smiled before delivering the punchline. "A large one."

A photographer doing the rounds of the party came up, and we stood together for a photograph, the girl looking poised and coolly amused while I grinned inanely beside her. So there it was: the moment we first met caught in a photo.

We started walking around the gallery, and I acknowledged a broker from Willis and his doughty wife.

"What about you? What do you do?" the girl asked.

"I'm in the insurance market, I'm afraid. One of those grey suits you see walking across Blackfriars Bridge every morning. We insure aircraft and ships, things like that. Very boring."

I was the one who had become boring, not my job. I was in danger of becoming dull, I realised that. Perhaps this girl was the gateway to the adventure I was waiting for.

"Go on," she said. "I’m interested."

"Every day, Lloyd’s insures billions of pounds worth of shipping and aircraft. There are two types of insurer in Lloyd’s, insurance syndicates and reinsurance syndicates. Say you insure an aircraft with one of the big American insurers, a Marsh or an AON. These big US firms won’t want to leave themselves exposed if the aircraft crashes on takeoff, so they pass on a chunk of that risk to us and some other reinsurers – are you following me?" The girl nodded.

"It’s like a game of pass the parcel. The exposure to risk gets smaller each time the parcel is handed on. Except that it’s always us who are left holding the parcel when the music stops."

I had a little speech that I trotted out whenever anybody asked me about my job. Even as I droned on, I felt her interest fading, but there was nothing I could do to stop myself.

"So, what happens if the music does stop?" she said.

"Thankfully, the number of disasters is pretty small. You know the number is small because when something does happen, you hear about it on the news. That passenger jet that crash-landed in Wyoming was one of ours. On the other hand, just think of the thousands of aircraft and container ships criss-crossing the world each day. My Dad says it’s a licence to print money."

"You sound close to your father."

"It’s difficult working for your Dad. I never really knew him when I was growing up ... he packed me off to boarding school at a young age." And spent most of your childhood belittling you, I thought, recalling the small boy standing in the hall in sodden pyjamas, not understanding where his mummy had gone to.

By now we were in front of a large black-and-white painting of a man masturbating. To be honest, I felt a little embarrassed.

"Do you think I should buy it?" I gave a nervous little laugh. "It would certainly get the conversation going."

"Here, this is one of ours," she said, leading me over. The girl gestured towards a hanging rectangle of light bulbs, each light switching on and off at random, and I wondered what it would be like to run my finger down the shaven nape of her neck.

"I don't get it," I said.

"You have to stand over here. Look, if you stand in the right place, you can see people moving."

I stood beside her, and now I could see it: moving silhouettes, outlines of people walking.

"My God, that's incredible. That's me, one of those dull commuters coming into London."

"Oh no. I think you're more interesting than that."

We exchanged a look, holding each other's gaze a fraction longer than necessary, a look that said, yes, I am available, and yes, I am interested. I felt my heart racing.

"Well," she said, extending a hand. "I'm here with a friend. I ought to go and find her. It was nice meeting you."

With that, she wandered off, and I found myself willing her to look back. Sure enough, she glanced over her shoulder.

"Wuh-low," said Currie in my ear, interrupting the moment. "Shatter my purple mountain, who's she, matey?"

"I don't know. She works in the art business. One of those Cork Street galleries, I guess."

"What's her name?"

"I don’t know. We never got to that point."

We both watched the girl slink through the crowd, and I cursed myself for not getting her card. I had no way of getting in touch with her. Currie murmured, "I wouldn't mind giving her my installation."

"You're so crude," I said, shaking my head.

Looking at my watch, I realised I had just experienced what for me was probably the high point of the night. The rest of the evening now seemed as flat as the bubbles in my glass. The prospect of another microwave dinner in front of the TV was not appealing and, setting my glass down, I decided to do one more tour of the paintings.

It was cold outside when I went to find my car, which was parked on the main road. That was when I saw her again, standing on a corner trying to hail a cab. She was wearing the fur bomber jacket and tottering a little on high heels. "Hello again. Can I give you a lift somewhere?" I coughed. "My car's just over there." The girl glanced down the road where a taxi was coming towards us with its light on. She was debating what to do. Please don't take it, my mind pleaded. "Of course," she said, "that's very kind."

We skipped across the road, and I pressed the clicker on my car. The Porsche Cayenne's hazard lights blinked a couple of times.

"Nice car," she said, pulling the door to with a satisfying thunk.

"Where to?" I asked, my finger poised over the satnav. "What's your postcode?"

"I live in the East End, near Columbia Road. Bethnal Green. The flower market. Do you know it?"

"Not an area of London I know at all. I live in Woolwich, one of those new developments on the river."

My car roared over London Bridge as we headed north up Bishopsgate. I was driving slightly faster than I needed to, partly to impress her, I suppose. I glanced at her as she stared out of the window. She touched her hair and the gesture reminded me of something, although it took me a moment to remember what. Then it came to me. It was something my mother used to do. The acceleration pushed us back in our seats, and my headlights splintered and reflected shop windows back at us. We turned right at Shoreditch High Street station and sped along Bethnal Green Road. In the weeks to come, I would think of this as going through the portal: everything seemed different and more vibrant in the East End where this girl lived. My Docklands flat seemed sterile and antiseptic by comparison.

She lived in one of a row of workers' cottages at the foot of Columbia Road. It wasn't much, she said, but it was all she could afford on a gallery assistant's wage. Did I want to come in for coffee?

Her bedsit was a double reception room on the ground floor. It might have been small, but she had made it beautiful: polished floorboards with a rich beeswax smell ("They took days to sand; the dust got everywhere"), simple white walls and a pretty working fireplace.

"What would you like to drink? I fancy a nightcap," she said, bending over to rummage in a dwarf cupboard. I admired the view and wondered what it would be like to run my hands over her shapely bottom. "It's a lovely room," I said, making conversation as she handed me a tiny orange drink. "But where do you sleep?" "You're sitting on it," she said, patting the sofa. The girl leaned across and pressed 'play' on a dusty-looking CD player. A doleful-sounding slide guitar announced a slow blues, something about somebody's lover leaving on a train. I took my first sip of the drink, and it tasted orange-y and delicious. The girl tucked her feet beneath her on the sofa.