The Money Makers (41 page)

‘Western Instruments? You’re kidding. You’re not? Let me have a think and I’ll call you back.’

Fifteen minutes later the client called back, keen to proceed. Matthew confirmed the price and they did the deal for all twenty-five million. With a mixture of relief and pain, Matthew scribbled out the ticket.

He had sold his bonds at seventy-eight cents in the dollar, giving him a loss of one and a quarter million bucks. His first year in the markets was turning out to be a mess, but, on the positive side, Matthew had put an end to the fiasco and learned a lot in the process.

Now for Plan B.

10

Pale November sun tilted across the park. Behind him, Ovenden House glowed a rich gold, but Zack had no eyes for it. He stood by the archway leading into the rose garden and paused.

The arch was covered by a rambling rose of the palest pink. So late in the season, most of its flowers had long since turned into a litter of petals on the flagstones beneath, but a few late sprays still held their blooms. Feeling he should have something in his hands, Zack reached up to snap off a couple of tresses. But the old rose was unexpectedly resilient and it fought the attempt to steal its treasures. He persisted and ended up yanking off three decent sprays of roses, but at some cost to the plant. Where he had broken the tresses, the stalk was mangled and one entire section was ripped away from the arch. He patted it back into place and hoped no one would notice. He took the roses and went in search of Sarah.

He hadn’t far to look. Sarah was kneeling beside a wooden arbour, planting a rose. On either side of her, yellow roses flushed with red sprang up, silent echoes of the setting sun. Sarah looked up.

‘Hello, gorgeous,’ she said.

Zack kissed her and offered her the roses.

‘What’s this?’

‘I’m giving you some roses.’

‘You can’t give them to me. They’re mine already.’

‘Eh?’

‘This is my rose garden. Daddy gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday. And the rose you’ve got there was named after me by its breeder. It’s the
Rosa
Sarah Havercoombe.’

‘Oh. Sorry. I won’t give you them then. I’ll present them. To you, my dear.’

She took the roses briefly, before crying out.

‘Ow! Damn!’ she said, sucking her hand. ‘You might at least have snapped the thorns off.’

Zack said sorry again and started to pick the thorns off the bouquet. It was rather prickly. The more he handled the roses, the more petals they shed. November roses are hardly the most robust of flowers, even the
Rosa
Sarah Havercoombe. By the time he had finished, the tresses had lost nearly all their flowers. It wasn’t how he’d envisaged the scene, but romance wasn’t his strong suit.

‘We’d better go and have a look at the poor old rose. You should never just break things off one, let alone at this time of year. Frost can damage unprotected wood.’ Zack walked in Sarah’s wake back to the archway.

‘Oh, Zack. You’ve made a real mess.’

Sarah opened an unobtrusive green metal cupboard positioned just inside the arch. Inside, amongst other implements, were two pairs of secateurs. Sarah took one of them and began to tidy the plant.

‘I haven’t done any lasting damage, have I?’

‘No, not lasting. Roses do shoot again after being pruned, you know. It’s one of the magic things about them. But don’t congratulate yourself on a job well done. This particular Sarah Havercoombe was doing perfectly well without your interference, thank you.’

Sarah finished snipping. She dropped the pile of rose clippings just outside the gate, where they would be collected for burning. She put the secateurs away and closed the cupboard. Peace was restored.

‘Sorry about the rose.’

‘It’s OK. Forget about it. Next time do it properly.’

‘There’s something I wanted to say. It’s the reason why I wanted to bring you roses. I want to marry you, Sarah. I mean, do you want to marry me?’ Zack stopped. This proposal had been a mess from beginning to end. He took the threadbare roses from Sarah, dropped on to one knee, took her hand in his and started again.

‘Dear, sweet, beloved Sarah, will you make me the happiest man in England, and be my wife?’

He offered her the bunch of roses, by this stage not much more than a bunch of sticks with the thorns picked off. She took them and her hand was shaking.

‘Oh Zack, dear Zack! I will.’

11

Inevitably, the van broke down. George was no mechanic and, anyway, there were no tools. There was no garage nearby and if there had been, it would have been closed. It was ten o’clock at night and pouring with rain.

There was nothing else for it. George heaved the van on to the verge, took his suitcase from the back and began the five-mile tramp home. He’d be soaked before he’d gone a mile, but in a way it was a nice way to return. At the end of it, there would be a thick cup of tea, maybe some sausage and egg and, he hoped, the strong comfort of Val’s embrace.

He trudged out of Ilkley along the country roads which would take him up the hill to Sawley Bridge. On either side, the wind moaned in the wet grass, and every now and then a horse or sheep ran startled away into the night. His suitcase was wet and heavy in his hand. All it contained was designer rubbish that he’d bought for Kiki’s benefit. He wouldn’t be needing it any more.

A little way off, a lake beat its waves in the blackness. From a ditch beside the road, he hauled a rock out of the sucking mud, opened his case and dumped the rock inside. He zipped the case up, squelched out into the field, and threw his case far out into the waters of the lake. The case bubbled and disappeared. Farewell Kiki. Farewell all that super-rich, French Riviera, your-chateau-or-mine world that George would never again enter.

Welcome Val. Welcome Yorkshire. Welcome Gissings.

By the time he arrived at Val’s house, it was long gone eleven and he was soaked through and glad to be back. When he tried his key, he found the door bolted from the inside. His knock brought Val to the door in her dressing gown.

‘Hi, Val. It’s me.’

‘So I see,’ said Val, making no move to let him in.

‘May I come in?’

She shook her head.

‘No. I’ve decided to stop letting rooms. Just tell me when you want to come round and get your stuff. It’s all in boxes in the shed.’

‘Letting a room, Val? I thought we ... I mean I’m sorry about buggering off like that. I really am. I’ve got so much to tell you. I ... it was wrong, I know. It was something I had to get out of my system, but it’s gone now. I promise. It won’t ever happen again.’

‘True,’ said Val, making as if to close the door.

‘Can’t I even come in for a moment? There’s something I have to say.’

He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, but the engagement ring in his breast pocket thundered against his heart. Val shook her head and the door closed further.

‘Wait. I don’t have anywhere to stay.’ Val shrugged.

‘I think there’s a hostel in Leeds if you’re desperate.’

She closed the door. The centre of Leeds was a good fifteen miles away.

George spent the night at the factory. The place was all shut up and George didn’t carry keys. Instead, he crept round to the old sawmill, which was left unlocked because there was nothing there. And on a pile of old lumber, wrapped in an oily tarpaulin pulled up over his Armani suit, George shivered and slept.

He woke early, walked back into Ilkley to get a proper breakfast and bought himself some decent clothes as soon as the shop opened. The sales assistant let George change into the clothes he had just bought and asked with a straight face if he would like his old suit folded or hung. George looked at the once lovely fabric, now soaked, tom and stained.

‘Incinerated,’ he said.

George arranged an indefinite stay at a local bed and breakfast, had a local garage come to pick up the van and meantime took a taxi in to Gissings. He plodded up to his office, feeling strange to be back.

A meeting was in progress. Andrew Walters, Jeff Wilmot, Val and a sulky Darren sat round the table. Andrew Walters, the acting managing director, was enjoying his tum in the seat of power, while Darren was sulking because he had no formal position in the company and, in George’s absence, nobody paid him much attention. Everyone except the impassive Val was startled at George’s arrival.

‘Hello, everyone. Sorry I’ve been away. I’m back now. What’s the news?’

Andrew Walters tried to tell the story of the Aspertons’ attack on Gissings, the copycat furniture and the price war, but Darren kept interrupting to get George’s attention. Wilmot weighed in behind Walters with his usual pomposity and Val, who could have summarised everything in a few crisp sentences, kept silent. Eventually George thought he’d got it.

‘So the Aspertons have copied our stuff, chopped their prices and are waiting for us to bleed to death. Right?’ A babble of voices agreed in their different ways. And we are bleeding, are we?’ asked George.

Wilmot responded acidly. The way he saw things, accountants should speak respectfully to their bosses. But then again, managing directors shouldn’t disappear in the midst of the firm’s worst ever crisis with a pocket full of the company’s precious cash.

‘I think you could say we are bleeding, yes. We’ve managed to survive as long as we have because we’ve been chasing customers to pay us and we haven’t been paying our suppliers. As Mr Walters was saying just before you entered, we probably have about one week before we literally run out of cash. In my view, which I have made very plain, and, have indeed written a number of quite forceful memorandums on the topic’ - he waved a wad of paper - ‘we are on the brink of insolvency and have a statutory obligation to cease trading.’

‘What?’

‘We have no reason to believe that we can pay either our suppliers or our workers, and it is illegal to continue in business under those circumstances. In my memorandums, which you will find on your desk ...’

‘Yeah, OK. If we all go to jail, we’ll have a whipround for you, Jeff. Thanks. You’ve made your point. Now, what have we done in response?’

The answer was, precious little, but it took a long time for George to establish the fact. A few costs had been cut, an extra drive had been injected into the marketing effort, but that was it. Their sales hadn’t completely dried up, but their order books weren’t a pretty sight.

‘OK. I get the picture. Can I have a look at the Aspertons’ stuff? We’ve got samples, right?’

‘Er, not exactly,’ said Walters.

‘Well, I want to see it. Darren, go out right now and spend this’ - George tossed Darren a bundle of notes- ‘on the Asperton rip-offs. Come back as soon as you can.’

Darren was out of the door before George had finished speaking and had started yelling for Dave at the top of his voice. A couple of minutes later, a Gissings van sped out of the car-park, Radio One blaring from its decrepit radio.

George filled in the next couple of hours going through stuff that should have been attended to weeks ago. He had a series of messages from David Ballard, the bank manager, which George tore up. Val spoke as little as she could and avoided anything personal. George tried to apologise for vanishing the way he had, but she cut him off.

‘I don’t think that that’s got much to do with my job description, do you?’

‘Oh, come on, Val. Let’s talk, for heaven’s sake.’

‘I’m sorry. I have some filing to do.’

It was a miserable wait. Eventually, Darren and Dave returned, gleefully. The van was loaded dangerously full, both lads were smoking cigars and Darren was waving George’s wad of money.

‘Went to the Asperton factory outlet, called old man Asperton up from reception, and said we was from Gissings. Admired their bleeding furniture so much, we wanted to buy some samples. The bleeder came downstairs himself and gave us the van-load for free. He said not to worry about paying, cos furniture makers should stick together like brothers. Tosser! Idiot couldn’t stop giggling. Dave managed to half­inch some of his cigars and I helped myself to a pile of their brochures.’

‘Yeah,’ added Dave. ‘Darren wanted to slash a few tyres in the car-park but I told him not to be a plonker.’ Andrew Walters started to lecture the two lads on how every employee was an ambassador for the firm, but George just took his money and told Walters to forget it.

They lugged the Asperton Brilliants out of the van and into the old Gissings museum, which now stood empty. George summoned a couple of craftsmen and they started to rip the furniture apart.

They tried to identify the paint, the varnish, the wood,

the preservative, even the metalwork supplier. They noticed where glue was used, where nails, and where jointing. They took precise measurements of every detail. They identified the types of hinges, brackets, handles and even screws. They sketched the designs and analysed the brochure.

Once they had done all they could, they started to cost out the Asperton range, aiming to calculate the production cost of each unit. The Aspertons’ plan emerged clearly enough. They had produced a range of copycat furniture on the lowest budget they possibly could. At their rock-bottom pricing they were certainly making a loss, but they were cutting corners to keep their losses to a minimum. They wanted to bankrupt Gissings, but didn’t want to pay too much for the pleasure. At two o’clock in the morning, George called a halt.