The Money Makers (68 page)

‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

‘Sure,’ said the man with a smile. ‘Please tell Mr George Gradley that Mr Thurston and Ms O’Shea are here to see him.’

‘Certainly. May I ask you to sign in?’

Under ‘company name’ Thurston wrote ‘Oregon Surveying’. A gold Rolex peeped from beneath his disguise. The receptionist called George’s office, while trying to memorise everything she could about the two visitors. It would be valuable gossip come lunch time.

George scuttled down as quick as he could. The sooner this was over the better. He’d got rid of Val for the day, sending her to keep an eye on Andrew Walters as he negotiated timber prices with their main supplier. Walters was always enormously pleased with his own efforts, but George had noticed that sending Val along as well was equivalent to an extra five percent discount. When he saw Thurston and O’Shea in their spotless boiler suits, George’s heart sank. They stuck out like royals in a soup kitchen.

‘Morning.’

‘Morning,’ said Thurston, before adding conspiratorially, ‘we’ve introduced ourselves as surveyors. That way we can look around and nobody will suspect.’

‘Good idea. But you might want to remove those tags from your cases.’

‘Oh, sure. Good catch,’ said Thurston as he and his partner scrambled to remove their gold-card frequent­ flier tags.

As O’Shea perfected her disguise, she shot one of her big smiles at George. A month ago in the pub, his knees had reacted like jellies, but today the missile seemed to have lost its power. Maybe it was that O’Shea had called George twice a day with finicky questions about the numbers he’d handed over, or maybe it was George’s embarrassment with the visit. Either way, he smiled back, his knees as solid and stiff as ever.

‘Let’s get going, then, shall we?’

Kelly O’Shea coiled her hair into a chignon and fixed it with a pin. Her hard hat sat on top, plausible as a politician’s promise, and George led them out on to the shop floor. He had expected them to look ignorantly around and move rapidly on, but not a bit of it. They had seen a lot of furniture factories in their time and their scrutiny was detailed and insightful.

They asked about the dilapidated plant. They asked about throughputs, and scheduling, and worker training, and safety records, and factory layout and investment plans. They even examined some of Darren’s more inventive repairs, and, rather than being shocked as George had expected, were impressed. ‘Neat cash conservation technique, huh, Kelly?’ Thurston commented. Their tour of the shop floor lasted two hours plus forty minutes or so in the paintshop. They spent a further hour and a half in the showroom, and even managed to find things to do for thirty minutes in the warehouse. When they were done, they removed their hard hats, O’Shea released the pin from her hair, letting it tumble down in undiminished splendour, and they all went up to George’s office.

‘Many thanks for the tour, George. It’s a very impressive facility you have here.’

‘No one’s ever called it that before. Clapped out, yes. Archaeologically interesting, yes. Impressive, never.’

‘But seriously, George, we admire your low-cost, low­investment production techniques. Why spend money if you don’t have to?’

George shrugged. He didn’t feel the need to argue. Thurston continued. ‘Actually, we see plenty of possibilities. We centralise all our design work in Oregon and our customised information systems have the potential to shave costs from your marketing, purchasing, and financial units. Then there’s the advantages of centralised purchasing, our financing costs are way lower than yours - I guess your British banks must be greedy, right? - and, oh, a lot of things.’

He stopped short abruptly. His evangelical fervour had carried him further than he had intended. If Thurston thought Gissings’ potential was as great as all that, then logically Oregon Furniture should be willing to pay top dollar for it. ‘Of course, there are negatives too,’ he added, ‘but we prefer to dwell on the positive.’

‘Would you anticipate a lot of lay-offs?’ asked George.

‘Well, George, we can’t be sure of anything until we’ve put our own people in here and developed a business plan. But remember that our aim is to build a European­scale business here. Gissings would only be a first step in a· much broader vision. And, in any case, we will always protect the employment rights of every employee.’

‘We’re proud of our record on employee empowerment,’ chimed O’Shea. ‘Our mission statement draws attention to that.’

That was true. But the story told by the annual reports and the press clippings and all of the other documents that had landed on George’s lap in the pub left no room for doubt. Oregon took over smaller companies. It taught them how to do things the Oregon way, then fired everyone who was no longer needed. Much as George wanted to believe that things would be different, he knew he wasn’t handing the company over to a bunch of sweet-natured philanthropists. And the Gissings name would go, of course. His last obligation to old Tom Gissing would be violated.

‘Are you going to make me an offer, then?’ asked George.

‘Well, George, we can’t commit to that right here. We’ll have to defend any recommendation of ours at our monthly strategy committee, which usually throws it back at us with a whole bunch of questions. Right, Kelly?’

‘Right. We have to present a rigorous business plan, which they’ll do their best to beat up on. It’s a very thorough procedure.’

‘But that means that you will be putting forward a recommendation?’

Thurston was taken aback by George’s bluntness.

‘We haven’t discussed price, yet, George. Or terms and conditions. I guess if we get a provisional go-ahead by the committee, we’ll be back with our legal team and see if we can negotiate ourselves a deal. If we manage to reach agreement with you - and let me be up-front with you, George, we can be pretty tough; tough but fair - then we’ll put forward a recommendation. If we get the committee’s final say-so, then we can close the deal.’

‘How long does all that take?’

‘Well, if you give us everything we ask for, we can move pretty fast, right, Kelly?’ Thurston laughed excessively at his own joke. O’Shea smiled and nodded. Her smile could have sold toothpaste to the toothless, but George’s knees were immune. Maybe he’d gone off pretty women. Thurston continued, ‘But if you insist on negotiating, George, then I’d say the whole process would last around four months.’

‘That’s too long.’ George took out two copies of a document from his desk drawer. It was a contract for the sale of Gissings drawn up by a local solicitor, the same one who had drafted the contract when George had bought the place. This time, the contract was drawn up to be one-sided in favour of the seller. ‘Here’s a contract. There are two blanks in it. One is for the date. One is for the amount you guys are paying. You can have a good read of this contract, take it to as many committees as you wish, then send it back to me. You can make changes if you want to, but if I don’t like them, I won’t sign. You can put in whatever purchase price you want, but if I don’t like it, I won’t sign. There’s not going to be any negotiation. You just have to name your best price and see if I like it. You won’t get a second chance.

‘That’s one thing. The other’s this. The business has to be sold by July the thirteenth. That’s when I need your cash in my bank account. If there’s any delay, even a day or an hour, then we don’t have a deal. That gives you a full three months, so I can’t see you having any problem. Do I make myself clear?’

Thurston picked up the contract uncertainly. They didn’t teach this kind of negotiation in business school.

‘You’re very clear, George, but I’m not sure that the process you’ve outlined is going to lead to an optimal issue resolution matrix. There are some pretty complex issues to think about here.’

‘That’s fine. You do your best. But if you can’t meet my deadline, then I swear to you we don’t have a deal.’

‘You must really want the money on that date, George. What’s happening? Want to put the money on a horse race?’

‘Maybe.’

Thurston remained uncertain. He looked at O’Shea for help, but she didn’t understand what was going on either.

‘Help me out here, George. Any clues what price you’re looking for?’

‘Oh, I know what price I’m looking for,’ said George, tapping a sealed white envelope on his desk. ‘It’s in here. And if you’re even one penny lower, or if your lawyers start playing games with the contract, then it’s no deal. Am I clear?’

Thurston nodded. ‘Couldn’t be clearer,’ he said. There didn’t seem to be much point in hanging around to make conversation, so Thurston and O’Shea gathered themselves up to go. Thurston tucked his papers into his briefcase, O’Shea closed up her laptop and tucked her phone back into the pocket of her ridiculous boiler suit. A tag from the store where she’d bought it still hung from the collar. They stood ready to leave.

‘Great to see you again, George.’

‘Yes. It’s been a great pleasure to see your facility here. We’ve been most impressed.’

Thurston’s iron handshake, O’Shea’s cooling clasp.

‘Thanks for coming. I suppose I’ll be hearing from you.’

Thurston’s eyes strayed one last time to the white envelope on George’s desk. ‘You don’t want me to post that letter for you, George? Huh? Ha, ha.’

Thurston’s nervous laughter and O’Shea’s brilliant smile walked off down the hall. George watched from the upstairs window as they made their way out into the yard, took one last look around and drove off in their hired sports car. Gravel spurted from its tyres as it accelerated away from the factory gates. George wondered whether he’d put them off for ever by his unconventional negotiating stance, but he wasn’t sure he cared. He’d miss Gissings.

A clatter of footsteps on the stairs and Darren’s noisy panting recalled him to reality.

‘Who the friggin’ hell were they? They were unreal. We tried to have a poke round in their car, but it was alarmed and we couldn’t see anything lying about anyway.’

‘They were surveyors.’

‘Yeah, well if they were surveyors then I’m the bleeding King of Spain, I am. But don’t worry, I’ll grab Val when she gets back and get her to dish the dirt. You’re not keeping secrets from me, Georgie.’

‘We’ll see about that, your highness.’

7

The first two dials were locked into position and Matthew stepped forward. A month had passed since he’d first come here. This was the first day of his second spell on vault duty, and his last chance to do as Belial had suggested.

He rotated the dial quickly to begin with, then let it slow as the first number of the combination moved into sight. He found the right number and twirled the dial back the other way. Inside the steel door, an oiled drum moved round, counting off the numbers.

Matthew found the last number and locked the dial into position. Overhead, a camera watched him do it and sent the silent pictures upstairs to be recorded and stored. The security guard put his hand to the wheel and began to open the door. Wind howled for a moment as the pressure equalised, then the gale subsided. The vault fell silent. They walked in.

Matthew had two rubber bands round the ankle of his left leg and a plan in his head, but he didn’t know if he was going to put his plan into action. He’d recently escaped a jail sentence for insider trading at the cost of half a million pounds. Only a lunatic would try to burgle the safest bank vault in England. Was Matthew a lunatic? He didn’t yet know.

The party of three walked round the vaults. The bullion sat in the bullion vault, as precious and as lifeless as ever. The offices just looked like offices. The circular saw on the cutting table was sheathed and silent, but a shower of paper dust hadn’t been cleaned up from the day before, and the Air France calendar had been turned forward to the right month. Cameras watched as the three of them inspected.

They went into the Eurobond vault. The Eurobond vault is more alive than the bullion vault. Gold is eternal. Gold doesn’t pay interest and doesn’t get repaid. Gold could sit in the vaults at Madison for ever, while a million owners bought and sold, won and lost, made their fortunes or ruined them. Eurobonds aren’t like that. Coupons need to be cut. Interest must be claimed. The bonds need to be repaid and the certificates destroyed before companies borrow again to stock the vaults with new bundles of their invaluable paper.

Every day, the bond vault looked a little different, as bonds were taken out, coupons trimmed, old bonds destroyed, new ones filed. As they entered, Matthew looked round to locate the librarian’s trolley. The trolley was in the centre of one of the aisles furthest from the two cameras that Matthew could see. There could well be others. He mustn’t make assumptions. But it was a nice start. Better still, the trolley looked well stocked.

The three men walked round the room, looking for anything amiss. The neon light which had flickered a month ago, still flickered. It was irritating but irrelevant. On their way back towards the door, Matthew let the security guards walk down aisle T-U. He took the slightly longer route down aisle V-Z. The librarian’s trolley was in the middle of the aisle.

When he got to the trolley, he stooped down. His right shoelace had come loose. It was loose because Matthew had loosened it. He knelt down to tie it, leaving the shin of his left leg at about forty-five degrees to the floor. His trouser leg hung open about eight inches from the trolley. Round his ankle, the rubber bands squeezed his leg. ‘Will you or won’t you?’ they asked. ‘Dare you or daren’t you?’