The Money Makers (27 page)

12

‘We’ll have to phone and cancel.’

‘We can’t cancel. They’re customers. They’re an endangered species.’

‘Well, we can’t supply what they’ve ordered.’ Andrew Walters and George stared at each other.

This was a showdown which each had been expecting since George insisted on putting his ‘Bright and Beautiful’ range on to the stand at Olympia.

The classic and traditional ranges had sold better than expected, but at George’s insistence they’d been running the production lines at full tilt over the last four weeks, and by working more long shifts they should be able to meet their commitments. Wilmot was happy too. With the extra ten percent George had slapped on to prices, they were making excellent money on every sale.

But almost half their orders were for the Bright and Beautiful range. George had put prices up once, then twice, then pushed back delivery dates in an attempt to give the creaking factory a chance. If they could meet the orders, they’d have made a huge step towards turning the company around. If they defaulted on their promises, or if the cost of meeting their promises was prohibitive, the company might yet be dead and buried before the end of the year.

There were two main problems. First, they needed a supply of metal frames for the furniture far in excess of what they had already ordered. Second, the paintshop was grinding to a halt about twice a day. It had been designed for varnish only, not paints, and it wasn’t much good even with varnish these days. According to Walters, they could simply forget it as a way of painting the furniture Bright and Beautiful.

‘How about calling it Naked and Natural, instead? That way we could just send it out without paint or varnish.’

Walters was defeated. George hadn’t a clue what to do, but he wasn’t defeated. He began to explore the issues one by one with the older man. Just then, footsteps came running down the hall and into the room. It was Darren. Dressed in a hideous brown and purple shirt and dirty hipsters, he was a complete contrast to Andrew Walters’ old-fashioned formality. He skipped round like a puppy, waving a bit of paper.

‘It’s coming home, it’s coming home, Gissings’ coming home,’ he screeched.

He’d have continued, but Walters, with surprising deftness, tweaked the paper from his hand and began to read.

‘Well, what do you know?’ said Walters, in real admiration. ‘The little bleeder’s found a place in Sussex which says it can do all the frames we need, on time and under budget.’

‘It’s coming home, it’s coming home,’ chanted Darren, wiggling his hips.

Walters passed the paper over to George, who read it slowly. It was a written quote from The Sussex Metal Workshop. Sure enough, one of their two problems seemed to have been solved.

‘Good stuff,’ said George. ‘Now there’s just the paint issue to deal with.’

Darren’s chant tailed off. Walters looked grim. Then he remembered Darren’s presence and pulled himself together.

‘Well, we’ve basically got about three options. First, we tell all our customers to wait for about a year while we figure out how to fill their order. I assume we’re not keen on that one. Second, we buy, beg, borrow or steal a fully equipped paintshop from somebody. Third, we buy a few dozen hand-held sprays, hire enough workers to work round the clock, do everything by hand and stand over the finished articles with umbrellas to keep the rain off while they dry. Remember we can’t even dry this stuff with our paintshop configured as it is.’

‘Yeah. Let’s concentrate on the last two options,’ grunted George.

‘OK. To do this properly we need a new paintshop, and that would include an expanded drying chamber. My guess is that we would spend, say, two hundred grand on equipment, plus a bit more for installation and all the rest of it. But this isn’t the kind of kit you just buy off the shelf. You order it, they make it. It all takes time. If we put in an order today, we’d be doing well to have everything up and running within four months.’

‘So we rule that out. What about renting out somebody else’s paintshop? Giving them some money for use of their facilities during the night? There must be somebody else with the facilities to do what we want. It’s hardly rocket science.’

‘I’ve already called around,’ said Walters. ‘The trouble is that anyone with the facilities to paint, varnish and dry furniture on a large scale is in the furniture business themselves. And they don’t want to give us a leg up. We’re competitors, after all.’

‘Hmm,’ said George. ‘Can you give me a list of who you’ve called? Which companies, and who you spoke to. Oh, and if there are any companies you didn’t call, but who you reckon would have the equipment we need, then give me their names too.’

‘Yes, if you want. Tell you who’d be best though. Asperton Holdings are the biggest manufacturers in the north of England, and they do a lot of work with paint. But we wouldn’t stand a chance with them. They’ve been dying for us to fold for years.’

‘S’true,’ said Darren. ‘I’ve got a mate there and he’s seen memos and stuff saying they expect us to keel over any day now. They thought about buying us out apparently, but thought, “What the hell. We’ll just wait for them to die, then grab their customers for nothing.”’

‘Lovely,’ murmured George. ‘Just lovely. Asperton Holdings, you say.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Now, what about our third option?’

‘The spray guns, you mean? That was a joke, George.’ Andrew Walters didn’t usually use George’s first name. That he did it now was a sign he was being careful with George’s feelings. It was as though he worried George’s refusal to contemplate defeat was on a par with Tom Gissing’s final flight from reality.

‘OK. Just tell me your joke at greater length, then.’ Walters sighed.

‘Well, the way we got the stuff ready for the trade fair was with hand-held spray guns which you can pick up anywhere. The wood needs undercoat and topcoat, maybe varnish too. Between each stage you need to let it dry. In total it took us about a couple of days per item. We used the museum room as a paint room and let things dry in there. If we had worked round the clock and filled the room with as much furniture as it would fit, we could probably have done around thirty units a week. Maybe forty.’

They would need to produce at least twenty or thirty times that number each week to meet their commitments.

‘OK Anything else?’ asked George. Walters was openly laughing now.

‘Well, the only other massive problem I can see is how labour intensive the process is. If we had a paintshop which worked, we’d just drop an entire batch on the conveyor belt in the morning, then stroll down after lunch and take it off. With spray guns it takes a hundred times longer, and you need care to get the finish right. We’d probably need to double or treble our staff just to do the painting. I can think of about nine or ten other problems, but they’re minor by comparison. I expect you don’t want the full list.’

George waited. Walters had finished. Darren too was silent. If he’d thought of anything else, he’d have chipped in by now.

‘Good,’ said George. ‘Thank you. Here’s what we’ll do.’

13

Zack went straight from Ovenden House to Weinstein Lukes, arriving at eight o’clock on Sunday evening. He’d had two analysts work through the weekend to prepare for the week ahead. The two youngsters, a Brit and a Swede, sitting in their wasteland of cold pizza and discarded company reports, were nearly finished.

‘How are you doing?’

‘We’ve got to rerun some of the share price data. The computers have been down. Apart from that we’re done.’

‘OK,’ said Zack. ‘Get on with that while I check this through.’

Weinstein Lukes is a banter-free zone. You say what you need to. You are polite and professional. But such is the pressure of work that unnecessary chat is squeezed out as surely as laziness.

Zack reviewed the work. It was basically fine, he saw with relief. He’d spent a weekend away from the office and it hadn’t gone wrong. There were a couple of errors which needed correction and a bit of extra work to be done, but all in all, the young pair had done a good job. Another six hours this evening should finish it.

Zack broke the news. The young British analyst, a gangly ginger-haired chap called Smylie, was crestfallen. He had a receding chin and a protruding forehead. It looked like somebody had squashed his chin in making everything else bulge out, like a fat man on a waterbed.

‘Actually, I’d been hoping to visit my grandmother this evening. It’s her ninetieth birthday and there’s a bit of a family get-together. I could come back in afterwards.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘She’s in a nursing home in Surrey. I could probably be there in an hour. Spend an hour or so there and be back here by eleven or half past.’

‘How much sleep did you get last night?’

‘About four hours. We were cranking to get finished.’ Smylie was hopeful.

‘OK.’ Zack was unmoved. ‘You’d better stay and finish this stuff now. We’ve got a few hours more work to do and I don’t want mistakes creeping in because of tiredness. You can see your grandmother tomorrow.’

Smylie nodded slowly. Tomorrow he was being taken off Zack’s project to start on something else, something else with deadlines that couldn’t wait, or wouldn’t. Besides, the family would all be gone and he’d have missed her birthday. Still, he’d sent a card. He’d try to get down next weekend.

While the analysts went wearily back to their number­crunching, Zack settled down to work. But though he tried to concentrate, there was something on his mind, a little pulse of excitement, bugging him.

The weekend had been fine, very pleasant in fact.

Lord Hatherleigh (‘Call me Jack, for heaven’s sake’) had proved to be an excellent teacher of fly-fishing, and, to his surprise, Zack had turned out a fairly adept pupil. The two men got on well, and the following day Zack had been genuinely tom between whether to fish with the viscount or ride with his daughter. However, Zack was there for a purpose, and he let Sarah coax him on to horseback. Sarah had galloped around him, jumping home-made jumps with terrifying skill and making unhelpful comments to Zack about his riding posture. He scowled with frustration, trying to pummel his lethargic nag into something faster than a slow walk. Sarah’s clear laugh rang out as she thundered past, inches away, spattering him with earth.

On horseback, her horsiness suddenly fell into place.

She was strong, daring, athletic, in command. Out here, it wasn’t off-putting, it was electrifying. By the time she’d dismounted and was standing beside Zack in the stable showing him how to undo the girth and remove the saddle, Zack was under her sexual spell as strongly as ever. He longed to touch her, but knew it was forbidden.

When he left for London, he told her he couldn’t wait to be invited back.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said lightly. ‘Old friends don’t need invitations. Just let us know when you’re coming.’ It had been a nice thing to say, but Zack didn’t want to be thought of as an old friend. Had her body really gone deaf? Couldn’t she hear his calling?

But it wasn’t any of that which was on his mind right now. It was something else, something earlier, something only partially seen. Zack thought back, searching for the clue.

When he had crashed into Lord Hatherleigh’s papers, he had looked groggily around at the debris as Sarah chased the two excited puppies round the room. Zack called up his mental picture of the scene, bringing it out of the shadows, sharpening the focus. In a remote part of his brain, the tiny pulse of excitement beat a little harder. The thing, whatever it was, lay here.

He scanned his mental image, reading the pages scattered on the floor.
Hatherleigh Pacific.
The name was everywhere. That was the family’s Hong Kong holding company, source of all its wealth. It had been worth £30 million or so when Lord Hatherleigh inherited the stake from his father, but it was worth fifteen times that amount today. More than just a decent fisherman, was Jack Hatherleigh.

But the name didn’t interest Zack. Hatherleigh’s desk was bound to be spread with his own company documents. No. It was the others that Zack struggled to identify. He concentrated harder and the picture inched further into focus.

South China Trust Bank.
That was one of the names alright. It was a middling sized Hong Kong bank, as far as Zack could remember. Why was Hatherleigh interested in South China Trust? Zack frowned. He’d been whacked on the head by a paperweight and the picture was blurred. But what was this? Sarah was fighting Bonnie for a sheaf of papers. The picture swayed to and fro as the contest raged. Zack froze the picture. Bonnie’s drooping lip hid the crucial wording. Zack released the picture and let it run forward for a second or two. Stop. Sarah was winning and Bonnie’s mouth was being forced open. Zack peered at the words visible through her teeth. There was some handwriting, hard to read. He grimaced with the effort.

Then he relaxed and smiled. He had work to do.

14

Founder’s Day at work; a party in the evening; an excuse to dress up.

Josie hadn’t been sure whether to go, worried about finding someone to look after her mother for the night, but in the end decided to go for it. She hadn’t lost her taste for parties just because she’d lost her future, her wealth, her father and, in effect, her mother, all in a few horrible weeks last year. She’d go, get drunk, have a dance, do her best to have a good time.