In deepest Surrey the next morning, Ashby awoke at five o’clock in his old bedroom at his family home where he’d grown up and studied when he was at school. The sun had just about risen and the dawn chorus was in full voice. As he made himself a coffee, he thought about the day ahead for which his diary had been specially kept clear.
At half past ten, the funeral service for his father was to be held at St Dionis in Backchurch Street which adjoined Lime Street in the City.
Usually, funerals were not held in the Square Mile but in this instance, the vicar of St Dionis had made an exception. Plantation had looked after his church and several other Wren churches in the City. Some had been vandalised and broken into by thieves and Plantation had paid large amounts for repair and restoration work to be carried out.
Ashby was to give the funeral oration. The congregation would comprise people who had done business with his father, including all the brokers.
At half past one, a wake was to be held in the Admiral’s Room at the Risk Exchange in Leadenhall Street. How it would all go or whether he would be overcome, he couldn’t say but do it, he would.
During the next few hours, he breakfasted and dressed in a dark blue suit, took the train up to Waterloo and had an hour in his father’s office to think about what he would say in church. Before long, he was standing at the door of St Dionis, greeting mourners and shaking hands with people from Plantation, various underwriters and brokers known to him from most of the insurance firms in the City and also with journalists, lawyers, bankers, Members of Parliament and clients he didn’t know but who had known his father.
The church still had its original fittings in very old, carved oak from when it was first built after the Great Fire. The pews and aisles were almost full to capacity. When the moment arrived, he mounted the stairs of the eighteenth century pulpit and looking down on the congregation, described his memories of his father and what he’d learned from him. After the memorial service ended, he went with a small group to the cemetery and watched the coffin lowered into the grave and was the last to leave.
By the time he arrived at the wake, the drinks had just about finished and the food was all gone ; in this respect, the Admiral’s Room was no different from public houses across the country which closed their doors at three in the afternoon.
While he’d been away, Black, Grenville and Batistin had been circulating amongst the guests, many of whom set the direction for the market : prices could be ‘soft’ when companies and syndicates would under-cut each other for business or ‘hard’ when there were major losses worldwide such as earthquakes or hurricanes. Some were competitors of Plantation or took a percentage of the same business. Others had envied the overseas clients which Ashby’s father had acquired over the years and wanted to take them now that he was gone.
Knowing this, Grenville and Black had been sounding out the most influential underwriters and picking up the market gossip. Apparently, one of the brokers was running a book on Plantation’s chances of survival. The prices being offered were six to four that Plantation would collapse within a month ; two to one on a take-over ; five to one on a merger ; and a hundred to one that it would still be doing business on its own in six months time.
There were rumours about buyers for the company, stories about who wanted to destroy it and gossip about Rob Ashby himself – that he was eccentric in his risk predictions, wasn’t to be trusted and would suffer the same fate as his father.
As soon as Ashby was given one of the last remaining glasses of wine, he found himself talking to Max Weber of Alt Deutsche Versicherungs Aktiengesellschaft – ADV for short.
“A very sad loss for us, Mr Ashby. Please accept our sympathies. I will not be so boorish as to mention business to you on a day like this – but please, when things have quietened down again, drop by and see us in Leadenhall Street. We should have lunch sometime. Here is my card.” And with that, he made his exit, across the room to some of his colleagues.
“I see the vultures are out,” said Simon Wells. “They don’t waste much time, do they ? As soon as our founding director has gone, the knives come out for the kill.”
“What have they been saying ?”
“Ha – you wouldn’t believe some of the silly things people come up with. I’ve been listening to some of it – they’ve already got us well and truly taken over. Or closed down. Or liquidated. Or dismembered.”
“Well, we’re not there yet. How have you been going with Meredith ? Any ideas on what happened to the Captain Stratos ?”
“Not yet. We’re still working our way through it. But what strikes me as unusual is how your father wouldn’t cave in on the Stratos claim in the last year or two. Usually when a ship goes down, the wreck can be difficult to locate on the ocean floor. There’s sonar and underwater gear but a lot of it is hit and miss at the moment because they’re still developing the technical side. Even if what caused the accident is unknown, marine insurers like us end up taking a view. If the shipowners have been good clients over the years, we give them the benefit of the doubt and pay up. But with the Captain Stratos, that didn’t happen. In the papers filed with the court, our lawyers didn’t accuse the shipowners of anything dodgy – you know as well as I do that proving fraud isn’t easy. Instead, they said the circumstances of the loss weren’t linked to any accident, if there was one. In English courts, evidence is all and if you can’t actually show that you’ve lost money or something of value – in this case, a ship – then how can you be compensated for it ?”
“So, what you’re saying is....if I was claiming for stolen jewellery and the police found no evidence of a break-in or a burglary, it would be my word alone that the jewels had been stolen rather than misplaced or removed by me. And the court might accept the shipowners version of events, even if we won’t ?”
“Could be. The owners’ lawyers have said that if the Stratos didn’t meet with an accident, we have to prove that, even though it's their ship and their claim. How could we do that ?”