Читать книгу The Detection Collection - Филлис Дороти Джеймс, Филлис Джеймс, Simon Brett - Страница 8

‘I’ve had a dozen interviews here and in New York, I’ve met the head honcho twice and he loves me, everyone else thinks I’m perfect for the job, so tell me why I shouldn’t take it.’

We were sitting in ‘The Bunker’, the wine bar beneath the twenty-six-storey office block in Bishopsgate that Peter Brearton and I had occupied along with a few hundred other bankers several years before. Between us were two glasses, empty, and two bottles of Sancerre, one empty and one half-full. I refilled Peter’s glass. Peter was ambitious, energetic, highly intelligent, unfailingly successful in everything he did. He was thirty-one, a year older than me, although he looked younger, with his square face, short blond hair and round glasses. He was mellowing as he often did after a bottle of wine. I would get to the truth.

‘Don’t you trust me?’ he said.

‘Of course I trust you. I trust you more than anyone else I know. We’re old mates. That’s why I want you to explain to me why you left.’

Peter shook his head. ‘I told you, I can’t tell you.’

‘They’ve got a great reputation,’ I went on. ‘They’re aggressive but fair, they’re cunning but people trust them. They might not be big, but they’re the best in the world in their market. Bill Labouchere is a genius. Everyone says so.’

‘Don’t do it,’ Peter said.

I took a deep breath. ‘My boss gave me a month to find another job.’

Peter raised his eyebrows. I squirmed. It was something I hadn’t wanted to admit. A last resort.

‘How long ago was that?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘Oh.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘Still don’t do it.’

I couldn’t conceal my frustration. Labouchere Associates was a small elite outfit that had been responsible for some of the most daring takeovers and mergers in the oil business of the last decade. And they paid well. I would be doubling my salary as a vice-president. Partners, of whom there were a dozen or so, were reputed to earn many millions of dollars every year. That was certainly something to aim for. And the only thing that was standing between all that and me was Peter’s opinion.

‘I’m going to take it,’ I said.

Peter shook his head sadly. ‘You’re making a big mistake.’

‘If you can’t give me a good reason not to, I’m taking the job.’

Peter drained his glass, and stared at me thoughtfully. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you. But first get us another bottle of wine.’

He began:

It was last February. I had been at Labouchere just over two years and I was doing pretty well. The firm usually promotes new partners in March, and that year there was only one opening. They take the process very seriously, too seriously according to some of the partners, but not according to the only one that matters, Bill Labouchere. He insists on a weekend off-site session of role play, where the vice-presidents on the partnership track are put through a string of exercises, all watched closely by him and one other partner. The sessions are notorious within the firm, but unavoidable if you want promotion. And believe me, we all wanted promotion.

There were six candidates. Labouchere prides itself on its international staff: there were two Americans, a Canadian, a Colombian, a Norwegian and myself. The session was to be held at Lake Lenatonka, some godforsaken camp in New Hampshire. I flew over from London to Boston and drove a hired car from there all the way up to the lake. I was knackered, I had been pulling several all-nighters on a big financing project we were setting up in Rajasthan. Believe me, the last thing I was in the mood for was corporate games.

Lake Lenatonka was fifteen miles off the main road, down a dirt track in what they call the White Mountains. And they were white, or at least a blue shade of white in the moonlight. I didn’t pass a single car on that track, just pine trees, thousands and thousands of pine trees. I stopped every couple of miles to check the map. I dreaded getting lost; I could easily spend the whole night driving around those back roads without seeing anyone.

It takes a long time to drive fifteen miles along a dirt track at night, and I was relieved when I saw the wide expanse of the lake, a white board of snow on ice. The camp was a series of a dozen log cabins clustered around a larger building, from which a welcoming column of smoke twisted. There was indeed a roaring log fire in the reception and I went straight in to dinner, which had started without me.

The five other candidates were there, with Steve Goldberg, one of the partners, and Bill Labouchere. Everyone, even I, was wearing American corporate casual clothes: chinos and designer button-down shirts. It was warm, the drink was flowing and we were all having a great time. You’ve met Bill; he can be charming when he wants to be and he knows how to relax people. He’s a Cajun, from Louisiana, you know, that’s where he gets that weird accent. His father has his own oil company and sent him to Yale and then Columbia, where he read Psychology. He only went into the oil business himself when his father’s company ran into trouble. He couldn’t save it, but he did learn how to do deals. He’s the expert at doing the deal. The thing to remember about Bill is that it’s impossible for you to read him, but he can read you like a book.

It was a great dinner, exquisite food, wonderful Californian wines, Armagnac, cigars, we were all having a good time. I was sitting next to Manola Guzman. She’s a Colombian from the New York office, very smart, very poised, with dark flashing eyes, as sexy as hell. She speaks perfect American English with only the trace of a Latin accent. Her father is high up in the Colombian national oil company and she joined Labouchere out of Harvard Business School. She had a very good reputation, although people said that when she lost her temper she became quite scary. We hadn’t worked together much before, but she and I got on well that evening. I was enjoying myself. So was Bill, on her other side; the two of them were charming the pants off each other. He’s maybe sixty-two, but he’s quite handsome with his tanned face, black eyebrows and that shock of thick white hair. He had just ditched wife number three.

Then Bill made his speech. It was only a short one; he basically said two things. Firstly, we would all receive a package of information to study overnight, a ‘case’. We would be divided into three teams of two and would role-play a takeover battle. This was bad news: I was shattered and now a little drunk, not at all in the mood for reading documents late into the night.

Then came the second announcement. ‘You’ve all come a long way for this weekend,’ he said. ‘I would like to thank you for that. I know you are working on some very important transactions.’ We all tried to look important. ‘But I think it only fair to let you know who it is you have to beat. You all have a chance to make partnership, that’s why you are here, but one of you is in pole position.’

Suddenly we were all sober. Bill let the moment rest. He had that frustrating, slightly amused look on his face that he wears when he’s playing with you. We glanced around the table. There had been much office gossip about who would be promoted, and frankly I considered myself the favourite, with Manola and a Canadian smooth-talker called Charlie Cameron close behind.

‘Harald Utnes,’ Bill said. There was an intake of breath around the table. Eyebrows were raised. I noticed Manola next to me give a little smile. Perhaps she was pleased that my name hadn’t been mentioned. I knew Harald well. We had worked together for a year in London before he moved to New York nine months before. He was a tall Norwegian, a very nice guy, a geologist, totally reliable, but in my opinion he lacked the killer instinct, the ability to close a deal. And in our business, it’s closing deals that makes the money.

Deflated, we staggered outside and over to our cabins, clutching the sheaf of overnight reading. Scattered lights illuminated the path, but beyond them was the night, the stars, the snow, the millions of trees, the great American wilderness. Four of us peeled off in the same direction, Manola, Harald, Trent Dunston, an Ivy League jock from the New York office, with blue eyes, a turned-up nose, gleaming teeth and a scheming brain, and myself bringing up the rear. We were all a little drunk, but Trent was drunker than the rest of us.

‘Good night, Manola,’ he said. ‘Good night, Harald. Sleep well, both of you.’ His words were laced with innuendo.

Manola stopped in her tracks. ‘Fuck off, Trent,’ she snapped, anger igniting in her voice. ‘If you can’t accept reality, that’s your problem, not ours.’

Trent looked meaningfully at me and disappeared off to his cabin. Manola noticed my presence and looked confused. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Good night, Harald, Peter.’ And we all retired to our separate cabins. My interest piqued, I dawdled on the way to mine, just to make sure.

My alarm went off at four, and I got stuck into the case. Two oil companies, one French and one American, were competing to buy drilling rights in the Peruvian rain forest. Harald and I were to play the role of the French company. It was fiendishly complicated. To the usual problems of reliability of reserves, valuation and negotiation strategy, were added an ethical minefield of officials to bribe, public-relations pitfalls and environmental risks.

I was exhausted. My head throbbed and my eyes hurt, but at least I had the five-hour time difference on my side. At a quarter to six I noticed a tinge of grey around the edges of my curtains and decided to go for a half-hour run to clear my head.

I set off down to the lake and ran for about a mile along the shore on a path beaten into the snow. The dawn crept pink over the mountains to the east, and I fell into a rhythm, my breath puffing in clouds in front of me like an ancient steam train. All was quiet around the lake, all was peaceful. The first half mile was bitterly cold, but once I warmed up the sharp air was invigorating. As I ran, it suddenly occurred to me that the case was a trap. The smart thing to do was not to bid for the Peruvian oilfield at all: it would cause more public relations headaches than it was worth. I grinned to myself, it was typical of the kind of test Bill Labouchere would set. Well, I would show him that I could step back and see the bigger picture.

On my return journey I met Trent powering towards me: he had turned left along the lake shore where I had turned right. He slowed up so that we would meet, wished me a good morning and then pulled away. There was no doubt that he was fitter and stronger than me. And, competitive fool that I am, it pissed me off.

As we ran past the main lodge I saw a grey four-wheel drive speeding down the dirt track towards us. I wondered vaguely who it was arriving so quickly at that time in the morning, but I was too wrapped up in the case to give it much thought. I had a shower in my cabin, and walked back to the lodge for breakfast, my brain buzzing with PR strategies to ambush my American competitors when they bid for the Peruvian oilfield.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I walked into the dining room. The shock was palpable. The mountainous paraphernalia of an American breakfast buffet was untouched.

‘What is it?’ I asked Manola, who was standing, stunned, at the edge of the group, next to a large ham.

‘Harald has been killed.’

‘What!’

‘He was found by the lake, early this morning. He was murdered.’

‘No! Oh, my God.’ I looked at Manola. Her bottom lip was shaking: she bit it to keep it still. I touched her arm. ‘I’m sorry.’

She took a deep breath and fought to compose herself. She succeeded. ‘Peter?’ she said quietly, looking ahead of her, blinking.

‘Yes?’

‘You may have guessed something about me and Harald, I don’t know, you may not have. But if you have, don’t tell anyone, please. I’ll do it, once I’ve figured out how.’

I looked at her sharply. From Trent’s comments the night before and Manola’s response, I had guessed there was something going on between Harald and her. People abandoned their social life at companies like Labouchere, men and women spent long days, and nights, working together on deals; it was easier to begin a relationship inside the firm than outside it. That kind of thing was heavily frowned upon at Labouchere Associates. I had no doubt that if Bill found out about it, both of them would lose any chance of partnership. But someone had been killed, for God’s sake! Would Manola still try to salvage her partnership hopes in those circumstances?

She returned my stare. Her dark eyes were moist. ‘Please,’ she mouthed.

‘Okay,’ I said.

The police had been called, including a detective from the nearest town. He didn’t waste much time before interviewing us all, in the manager’s office. I was first.

The detective’s name was Sergeant O’Leary. He was a middle-aged man with a policeman’s moustache, wearing a brown suit, and I could see the rim of a black sweater under the collar of his white shirt. His tie was brown with grey stripes, right out of the seventies. He was businesslike, and asked pointed questions in a distinctive accent, New Hampshire, presumably. He asked me about my movements, about the details of my run that morning, and about what I knew of Harald and the other candidates. I told him what I could, although I missed out my suspicions about Harald and Manola. It was hard to concentrate on his questions. The reality of the murder hadn’t sunk into my exhausted, jet-lagged brain. Apparently Harald’s body had been found near the lake. His head had been bludgeoned with a rock.

Something was nagging at my mind. As I left the manager’s office, I paused. ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’

O’Leary snorted. ‘I doubt it, sir. I took a vacation to London with the kids a few years ago, but it’s pretty unlikely we met then.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’ But there was something. It was as much his mannerisms, that snort for example, as anything else. As you know, I never forget a face, or a name. But I couldn’t place him.

We waited in stunned silence as everyone was interviewed. Manola disappeared to her room as soon as her interview was finished. Trent made an attempt at light-hearted comments to break the tension, but failed and disappeared too. Myself, Charlie Cameron the Canadian, and Phil Riviani, a balding, overweight analyst who had been with the Houston office for fifteen years, waited in silence. The case was forgotten. I tried to go for a walk by the lake, but a uniformed policeman barred my way.

Eventually, Bill appeared, followed by Steve Goldberg, who had fetched Manola and Trent from their cabins. Manola’s eyes were rimmed red. Bill perched on the dining-room table and addressed us grimly.

‘This is clearly the worst day in our firm’s history,’ he began. ‘Harald was a great guy, he would have made a terrific partner, and we all miss him. We will all need time to mourn him in our own way. But for now, we have something very serious to consider. I have been speaking with Sergeant O’Leary, and he is of the strong opinion that whoever murdered Harald was staying at the camp. It snowed in the middle of last night and there are no fresh tracks anywhere leading in here. Of course, this suggests that the murderer could have been one of the staff at the camp, and the police are questioning them very closely as we speak. But, and I hate to say this …’ he paused and looked regretfully at each of our faces, ‘it is most likely that Harald’s killer is one of us. Or rather, one of you.’

He waited for our reaction. There wasn’t one for several seconds, before Charlie Cameron spoke. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he said.

Bill shrugged. ‘I find it very hard to accept, myself, but there is no other conclusion.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I said.

‘Sergeant O’Leary thinks it does,’ Bill said. ‘But I have every confidence in the loyalty and integrity of our people. Before he takes you all off to the nearest police station, I have persuaded him to allow you an hour to discuss it amongst yourselves. You’ve all worked together in the past, I’m sure you can figure out which one of you is responsible. You have an hour.’

With that, he was gone.

He left the rest of us, the five of us, staring at each other. It was an extraordinary situation, totally disorienting. Here we were, miles from anywhere, dealing with the surreal. I couldn’t accept it. ‘This is all bollocks,’ I said. ‘None of us killed Harald.’

‘No,’ said Phil Riviani. ‘None of us can have done. It must have been an outsider.’

Charlie Cameron nodded. Trent and Manola were motionless.

‘So what do we do?’ Phil said.

‘We wait an hour and then talk to the police again,’ I replied.

‘I guess so,’ said Phil.

We looked at each other in silence. The dining room must have been a recent addition to the lodge. It had a high-vaulted ceiling and big picture windows, giving a view of the lake, sunshine glaring white off its flat snowy surface. There were no signs of human habitation. Framed by the window, the winter landscape looked like something out of a Christmas card, not the scene of a murder.

‘You went for a run this morning,’ said Trent to me.

‘As did you. So what?’ I said.

‘I didn’t kill him.’

‘And neither did I.’

‘What did the police say to you?’ Charlie Cameron asked me, carefully.

‘They asked me about my run. Whether I saw anything. Whether I knew any reason why any of us would want to kill Harald.’

‘And what did you say?’ Charlie asked.

‘That I didn’t. Why?’

‘Well, when the police spoke to me, most of the interview was about you. They wanted to know all about your background, your ambitions, about your time working with Harald in London.’

‘They asked if I knew that you had once threatened to kill Harald,’ Phil said.

‘What! Harald and I got on well. I never threatened him.’

‘Until Bill told us that Harald was in pole position for partnership, you were the favourite,’ Trent said. ‘O’Leary asked me lots of questions about your desire to become a partner.’

I looked around the assembled group. They were puzzled, doubtful, but they were also suspicious. I could feel it in the air. All except Manola who was staring blankly ahead of her, blinking.

‘This is ridiculous,’ I said. ‘I didn’t kill him. None of us killed him.’

‘Somebody did,’ said Charlie Cameron in a reasonable tone. There was silence. Charlie, Phil and Trent all stared at me.

‘I know who killed Harald,’ Manola said in a whisper so low I wasn’t sure I had heard it. She was rocking backward and forward in her chair. Her face was red, and her expression tight as a drum, as if she were struggling to hold in a mighty force. ‘Harald and I had a relationship. We were engaged, actually.’ She held up her left hand, revealing a cluster of diamonds around her finger. ‘Of course we had to keep it secret. I put his ring on when I went to my room just now.’

‘I didn’t know,’ said Charlie. He and Phil looked completely surprised. Trent slouched back in his chair. His lips weren’t actually smiling, but he seemed, well, satisfied.

‘I’m sorry, Manola,’ I said.

She ignored me and took a deep breath. ‘They say it’s stupid to enter into a relationship with someone at work. In the case of Harald I don’t regret it for a moment, he was a wonderful man, but sometimes they are right.’ She sniffed. ‘What was stupid was the night I spent with Trent. It was eighteen months ago, before Harald. We were on a trip to Angola, we’d had a few too many drinks in the hotel bar. It was an awful mistake as I told Trent right afterwards. But he wouldn’t accept it.’

‘Are you saying I killed Harald?’ Trent said with scorn.

‘You were jealous. You were insanely, stupidly jealous, especially when you realised that Harald and I were having a relationship and that that relationship was serious.’

‘I was just kidding,’ said Trent, looking uncomfortable.

‘You stalked me! You followed us when we went out on dates. You called me up in the middle of the night. You sent me flowers, letters. You know you did all that, Trent.’

Now it was Trent’s turn to blush.

‘But there was no need to kill him,’ Manola’s voice was speeding up. She began to shake. ‘What did you think would happen when he was dead? Did you think I would fall into your arms, my fiancé’s killer? Did you think I would ever speak to you again?’

‘Hey, I didn’t kill him!’ Trent protested.

Manola was on her feet. ‘Of course you killed him! Peter didn’t, why would Peter do something like that? But he saw you out running by the lake, didn’t he? You killed him. You’re a murderer, Trent!’

She was screaming now, her face red, spittle flying from her lips. She launched into a tirade of Spanish, and lunged towards him. I stood up and took her by the arm. ‘It’s okay, Manola,’ I tried to say. ‘It’s okay.’

‘It’s not okay, Peter,’ she said, but she was sobbing. ‘I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t stand being in the room with him.’

‘Here, I’ll take you back to your cabin,’ I said. I led her out of the dining room. The policeman guarding the door was about to stop her, but I glared at him. He stepped out of our way. I took her to her room and left her there, promising I would be back in a few minutes.

As I walked back to the lodge I wondered what to do. I had no doubt that Manola was right, that Trent was jealous of her affair with Harald. But had he killed him? It just seemed so absurd, so unreal. The whole thing seemed unreal.

I saw the policeman waiting by the door. He was tall and nervous; Manola’s hysterics had clearly shaken him. He didn’t look like a country policeman at all. He was soft, no tough guy. I stared at him. A policeman, even in rural New Hampshire, should be able to handle angry women better than he had. Suddenly I knew where I had seen Sergeant O’Leary before.

‘Where’s your squad car?’ I asked the policeman.

‘Out back,’ he said.

‘I’m going to see it,’ I said. ‘And I’m going to take a look at where Harald was killed.’ I turned towards the path around the side of the building.

‘I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, sir,’ he said, stepping in front of me.

‘How can you stop me?’

‘I can restrain you, sir. I’m a policeman.’

‘Are you quite sure about that?’ I said.

I burst into the manager’s office. Bill, ‘Sergeant O’Leary’ and Steve Goldberg were sitting watching a small video screen on which was a view of a heated discussion between Trent, Phil and Charlie.

Bill turned around, and smiled when he saw me. ‘Well, well, well. I thought if anyone figured it out it would be you. How did you do it?’

‘You’re an actor, aren’t you?’ I said to the man in the bad suit. ‘You had a bit part in The West Wing a few years ago.’

‘You remembered that?’ said O’Leary. ‘I’m impressed. No one ever recognises me from that. I was only in one episode.’

‘Where’s Harald?’ I asked.

‘He’s fine,’ Bill said. ‘He’s at the motel in town. We whisked him away in the middle of the night. He has no idea what’s going on here. Poor fellow never was on the partnership track, but I needed a fall guy to play the favourite.’

‘What the hell are you doing?’ I demanded, making no attempt to hide my anger.

‘Calm down, Peter,’ Bill said, giving me his warmest grin. ‘This was the ultimate partnership test. We wanted you to be the chief suspect, and I must say you handled it pretty well. But that affair between Manola and Harald was quite unexpected. I wouldn’t have thought he was her type. And I’ve learned a lot about Trent as well.’

‘Did you see what you did to her?’ I demanded.

‘Manola has a tendency to lose her cool; that’s really her biggest weakness. She’ll be fine this afternoon once she knows Harald is okay. And she’ll be laughing about it next week.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I really don’t think so.’

‘My God, look!’ We both turned to see Steve Goldberg pointing to the video screen. It was a good picture, in colour. Manola was walking towards Trent, her back to the camera. Behind her back she was clutching a long carving knife from the ham platter. Trent hadn’t seen it yet, his expression was a mixture of embarrassment and complacency.

I ran for the door and sprinted across the hallway to the dining room. And then I heard Trent scream.

‘Whew,’ I said, when Peter had finished.

‘Are you still going to join Labouchere?’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘So, that’s why you quit, then?’

‘Yes. As did Harald, and Manola, of course. They split up.’

‘Understandable, I suppose. Did she actually kill Trent?’

‘Yes. It was covered up. It required all Bill Labouchere’s considerable organisational skills and influence. We all felt complicit so we all helped. We thought Manola had suffered extreme provocation, but we couldn’t be sure the courts would see it that way. In my opinion it was Bill who really killed Trent.’

‘But Labouchere Associates is still going strong?’

‘Going from strength to strength. The others stayed on as if nothing had happened. Charlie Cameron was even made a partner. No one mentions Lake Lenatonka. Ever.’ Then Peter frowned. He had seen someone over my shoulder. ‘Oh Christ,’ he said. ‘I forgot we arranged to meet here. For God’s sake, don’t mention any of this, will you?’

‘No, of course not,’ I said. I turned to see who Peter had spotted. Coming towards us was a dark-haired woman in an expensive low-cut cream suit and high heels. She was drop-dead gorgeous and the noise level in the bar dropped as every man turned to watch her make her way across to us.

She smiled when she saw Peter, a wide warm smile and kissed him quickly on the lips. Peter swallowed. ‘Mike, I don’t think you’ve met my wife, have you?’

She turned her smile to me. ‘Hi,’ she said, in an American accent. ‘I’m Manola. I’ve heard so much about you.’

‘Likewise,’ I said. ‘Likewise.’