Twelve Red Herrings (25 page)

“That’s all been
settled,” Marvin told him, his voice falling by several decibels. “I’m not
meant to let you know this, but you’ll be receiving the cheque on the thirtieth
of the month. The
company know
that your lawyer’s got
them by the balls... You wouldn’t even have to make the first payment until
after you’d received the million.”

“All right,”
said Pat, desperate to be rid of him. “I’ll do it, but not until I’ve received
the cheque.”

“Thank you, my
friend. I’ll drop round with the paperwork tomorrow night.”

“No, that’s not
possible,” said Pat. “I’m working nights this month. You’d better make it
tomorrow afternoon.”

“You won’t be
working nights once you’ve received that cheque, my friend,’ said Marvin,
letting out one of his dreadful shrill laughs. “Lucky man,” he added before he
put the phone down.

By the time
Marvin came round to the apartment the following afternoon, Pat was already
having second thoughts. If he had to visit Dr Royston again, they would
immediately realise the truth.

But once Marvin
had assured him that the medical could be with any doctor of his choice, and
that the first payment would be post-dated, he caved in and signed all the
forms between the pencilled crosses, making Ruth his sole beneficiary. He hoped
David would have approved of that decision, at least.

“Thank you, my
friend. I won’t be bothering you again,” promised Marvin. His final words as he
closed the door behind him were, “I promise you, you’ll never live to regret
it.” Pat saw his doctor a week later. The examination didn’t take long, as Pat
had recently had a complete check-up. On that occasion, as the doctor recalled,
Pat had appeared quite nervous, and couldn’t hide his relief when he’d phoned
to give him the all-clear. “Not much wrong with you, Patrick,” he said, ‘apart
from the asthma, which doesn’t seem to be getting any worse.” Marvin called a
week later to let Pat know that the doctor had given him a clean bill of
health, and that he had held on to his job with Geneva Life.

“I’m pleased for
you,” said Pat.
“But what about my cheque?”

“It will be paid
out on the last day of the month.
Only a matter of processing
it now.
Should be with you twenty-four hours before
the first payment is due on your policy.
Just like I said, you win both
ways.” Pat rang David’s lawyer on the last day of the month to ask if he had
received the cheque from Geneva Life.

“There was
nothing in this morning’s post,” Levy told him, ‘but I’ll phone the other side
right now, in case it’s already been issued and is on its way. If not, I’ll
start proceedings against them immediately.” Pat wondered if he should tell
Levy that he had signed a cheque for $oo which was due to be cleared the
following day, and that he only just had sufficient funds in his account to
cover it certainly not enough to see him through until his next pay packet.

All his surplus
cash had gone to help with David’s monthly payments to Geneva Life. He decided
not to mention it. David had repeatedly told him that if he was in any doubt,
he should say nothing.

“I’ll phone you
at close of business tonight and let you know exactly what the position is,”
said Levy.

“No, that won’t
be possible,” said Pat. “I’m on night duty all this week. In fact I have to
leave for work right now. Perhaps you could call me first thing tomorrow
morning?”

“Will do,”
promised the lawyer.

When Pat
returned home from work in the early hours, he couldn’t get to sleep. He tossed
and turned, worrying how he would survive for the rest of the month if his
cheque was presented to the bank that morning, and he still hadn’t received the
million dollars from Geneva Life.

His phone rang
at
9.3x
. Pat grabbed it, and was relieved to hear Mr.
Levy’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Patrick, I had a
call from Geneva Life yesterday evening while you were at work, and I must tell
you that you’ve broken Levy’s golden rule.”

“Levy’s golden
rule?” asked Pat, mystified.

“Yes, Levy’s
golden rule. It’s quite simple really, Patrick. By all means drop anything you
like, on anyone you like, but don’t ever drop it all over your own lawyer.”

“I don’t
understand,” said Pat.

“Your doctor has
supplied Geneva Life with a sample of your blood and urine, and they just
happen to be identical to the ones Dr Royston has in his laboratory in the name
of David Kravits.” Pat felt the blood draining from his head as he realised the
trick Marvin must have played on him. His heart began beating faster and
faster. Suddenly his legs gave way, and he collapsed on the floor, gasping for
breath.

“Did you hear
me, Patrick?” asked Levy. “Are you still there?” A paramedic team broke into
the apartment twenty minutes later, but, moments before they reached him, Pat
had died of a heart attack brought on by a suffocating bout of asthma.

Mr. Levy did
nothing until he was able to confirm with Pat’s bankers that his client’s
cheque for $oo had been cleared by the insurance company.

Nineteen months
later Pat’s sister Ruth received a payment of one million dollars from Geneva
Life, but not until they had gone through a lengthy court battle with Levy,
Goldberg and Levy.

The jury finally
accepted that Pat had died of natural causes, and that the insurance policy was
in existence at the time of his death.

I promise
you,
Marvin Roebuck lived to regret it.

DIANA HAD BEEN HOPING TO GET AWAY BY
FIVE, so she could be at the farm in time for dinner. She tried not to show her
true feelings when at 4.37 her deputy, Phil Haskins, presented her with a
complex twelve-page document that required the signature of a director before
it could be sent out to the client.

Haskins didn’t
hesitate to remind her that they had lost two similar contracts that week.

It was always
the same on a Friday. The phones would go quiet in the middle of the afternoon
and then, just as she thought she could slip away, an authorisation would land
on her desk. One glance at this particular document and Diana knew there would
be no chance of escaping before six.

The demands of
being a single parent as well as a director of a small but thriving City
company meant there were few moments left in any day to relax, so when it came
to the one weekend in four that James
and ,
Caroline
spent with her ex-husband, Diana would try to leave the office a little earlier
than usual to avoid getting snarled up in the weekend traffic.

She read through
the first page slowly and made a couple of emendations, aware that any mistake
made hastily on a Friday night could be regretted in the weeks to come. She
glanced at the clock on her desk as she signed the final page of the document.

It was just
flicking over to 5.52.

Diana gathered
up her bag and walked purposefully towards the door, dropping the contract on
Phil’s desk without bothering to suggest that he have a good weekend. She suspected
that the NEVER STOP ON THE MOTORWAY paperwork had been on his desk since nine
o’clock that morning, but that holding it until 4.37 was his only means of
revenge now that she had been made head of department.

Once she was
safely in the lift, she pressed the button for the basement carpark,
calculating that the delay would probably add an extra hour to her journey.

She stepped out
of the lift, walked over to her Audi estate, unlocked the door and threw her
bag onto the back seat. When she drove up onto the street the stream of
twilight traffic was just about keeping pace with the pinstriped pedestrians
who, like worker ants, were hurrying towards the nearest hole in the ground.

She flicked on
the six o’clock news. The chimes of Big Ben rang out, before spokesmen from
each of the three main political parties gave their views on the European
election results. John Major was refusing to comment on his future. The
Conservative Party’s explanation for its poor showing was that only forty-two
per cent of the country had bothered to go to the polls. Diana felt guilty –
she was among the fifty-eight per cent who had failed to register their vote.

The newscaster
moved on to say that the situation in Bosnia remained desperate, and that the
UN was threatening dire consequences if Radovan Karadzik and the Serbs didn’t
come to an agreement with the other warring parties. Diana’s mind began to
drift – such a threat was hardly news any longer. She suspected that if she
turned on the radio in a year’s time they would probably be repeating it word
for word.

As her car
crawled round Russell Square, she began to think about the weekend ahead. It
had been over a year since John had told her that he had met another woman and
wanted a divorce. She still wondered why, after seven years of marriage, she
hadn’t been more shocked- or at least angry- at hi.s betrayal. Since her
appointment as a director, she had to admit they had spent less and less time
together. And perhaps she had become anaesthetised by the fact that a third of
the married couples in Britain were now divorced or separated. Her parents had
been unable to hide their disappointment, but then they had been married for
forty-two years.

The divorce had
been amicable enough, as John, who earned less than she did – one of their
problems, perhaps – had given in to most of her demands. She had kept the flat
in Pumey, the Audi estate and the children, to whom John was allowed access one
weekend in four. He would have picked them up from school earlier that
afternoon, and, as usual, he’d return them to the flat in Putney around seven
on Sunday evening.

Diana would go
to almost any lengths to avoid being left on her own in Putney when they
weren’t around, and although she regularly grumbled about being landed with the
responsibility of bringing up two children without a father, she missed them
desperately the moment they were out of sight.

She hadn’t taken
a lover and she didn’t sleep around. None of the senior staff at the office had
ever gone further than asking her out to lunch.
Perhaps
because only three of them were unmarried and not without reason.
The
one person she might have considered having a relationship with had made it
abundantly clear that he only wanted to spend the night with her, not the days.

In any case, Diana
had decided long ago that if she was to be taken seriously as the company’s
first woman director, an office affair, however casual or short-lived, could
only end in tears.

Men are so vain,
she thought. A woman only had to make one mistake and she was immediately
labelled as promiscuous. Then every other man on the premises either smirks
behind your back, or treats your thigh as an extension of the arm on his chair.

Diana groaned as
she came to a halt at yet another red light. In twenty minutes she hadn’t
covered more than a couple of miles.

She opened the
glove box on the passenger side and fumbled in the dark for a cassette. She
found one and pressed it into the slot, hoping it would be Pavarotti, only to
be greeted by the strident tones of Gloria Gaynor assuring her “I will
survive’. She smiled and thought about Daniel, as the light changed to green.

She and Daniel
had read Economics at Bristol University in the early 98os, friends but never
lovers. Then Daniel met Rachael, who had come up a year after them, and from
that moment he had never looked at another woman. They married the day he
graduated, and after they returned from their honeymoon Daniel took over the
management of his father’s farm in Bedfordshire. Three children had followed in
quick succession, and Diana had been proud when she was asked to be godmother
to Sophie, the eldest. Daniel and Rachael had now been married for twelve
years, and Diana felt confident that they wouldn’t be disappointing their
parents with any suggestion of a divorce.

Although they
were convinced she led an exciting and fulfilling life, Diana often envied
their gentle and uncomplicated existence.

She was
regularly asked to spend the weekend with them in the country, but for every
two or three invitations Daniel issued, she only accepted one – not because she
wouldn’t have liked to join them more often, but because since her divorce she
had no desire to take advantage of their hospitality.

Although she
enjoyed her work, it had been a bloody week.

Two contracts
had fallen through, James had been dropped from the school football team, and
Caroline had never stopped telling her that her father didn’t mind her watching
television when she ought to be doing her prep.

Another traffic
light changed to red.

It took Diana
nearly an hour to travel the seven miles out of the city, and when she reached
the first dual carriageway, she glanced up at the A sign, more out of habit
than to seek guidance, because she knew every yard of the road from her office
to the farm. She tried to increase her speed, but it was quite impossible, as
both lanes remained obstinately crowded.

“Damn.” She had
forgotten to get them a present, even a decent bottle of claret. “Damn,” she
repeated: Daniel and Rachael always did the giving. She began to wonder if she
could pick something up on the way, then remembered there was nothing but
service stations between here and the farm. She couldn’t turn up with yet
another box of chocolates they’d never eat. When she reached the roundabout
that led onto the
As
, she managed to push the car over
fifty for the first time.