The plane had entered a land of eternal pre-dawn. Outside his cabin window, wave after wave of frozen sea rolled towards a colourless infinity. All round him, white-shrouded passengers slept in the unearthly postures of the dead. One had her arm thrown upwards as if she had been shot while waving to someone. Another had his mouth open in a silent scream, and his dead man’s hand across his heart. Upright and alone, Justin returned his gaze to the window. His face floated in it beside Tessa’s, like the masks of people he once knew.
9
“It’s just bloody horrible!” cried a balding figure in a voluminous brown overcoat, prising Justin free of his luggage trolley and blinding him with a bear-hug. “It’s absolutely foul and fucking unfair and bloody horrible. First Garth, now Tess.”
“Thank you, Ham,” said Justin, returning the embrace as best he could, given that his arms were pinned to his sides. “And thank you for turning out at this ungodly hour. No, I’ll take that, thank you. You carry the suitcase.”
“I’d have come to the funeral if you’d let me! Christ, Justin!”
“It was better to have you holding the fort,” said Justin kindly.
“That suit warm enough? Bit brass monkeys, isn’t it, after sunny Africa?”
Arthur Luigi Hammond was sole partner of the law firm of Hammond Manzini of London and Turin. Ham’s father had devilled with Tessa’s father at law school at Oxford, and afterwards at law school in Milan. At a single ceremony in a tall church in Turin they had married two aristocratic Italian sisters, both fabled beauties. When Tessa was born to the one, Ham was born to the other. As the children grew they spent holidays together on Elba, skied together in Cortina and, as de facto brother and sister, graduated together at university, Ham with a rugger Blue and a hard-won Third, Tessa with a First. Since the death of Tessa’s parents Ham had played the part of Tessa’s wise uncle, zealously administering her family trust, making ruinously prudent investments for her and, with all the authority of his prematurely bald head, curbing his cousin’s generous instincts while forgetting to render his own fees. He was big and pink and shiny, with twinkly eyes and liquid cheeks that frowned or smiled with every inner breeze. When Ham plays gin rummy, Tessa used to say, you know his hand before he does, just by the width of his grin when he picks up each card.
“Why not shove that thing in the back?” Ham roared as they clambered into his tiny car. “All right, on the floor then. What’s it got in it? Heroin?”
“Cocaine,” said Justin as he discreetly scanned the ranks of frosted cars. At immigration, two woman officers had nodded him through with conspicuous indifference. In the luggage hall, two dull-faced men in suits and identification tags had looked at everyone but Justin. Three cars down from Ham’s, a man and woman sat head to head in the front of a beige Ford saloon studying a map. In a civilised country, you can never tell, gentlemen, the jaded instructor on the security course liked to say. The most comfortable thing you can do is assume they’re with you all the time.
“All set?” Ham asked shyly, buckling his seat belt.
England was beautiful. Low rays of morning sun gilded the frozen Sussex plough. Ham drove as he always drove, at sixty-five miles an hour in a seventy speed limit, ten yards behind the belching exhaust pipe of the nearest convenient lorry.
“Meg sends love,” he announced gruffly, in a reference to his very pregnant wife. “Blubbed for a week. So did I. Blub now if I’m not bloody careful.”
“I’m sorry, Ham,” said Justin simply, accepting without bitterness that Ham was one of those mourners who look to the bereaved for consolation.
“I just wish they’d find the bugger, that’s all,” Ham burst out some minutes later. “And when they’ve strung him up, they can toss those Fleet Street bastards into the Thames for good measure. She’s doing time with her bloody mother,” he added. “That should bring it on.”
They drove once more in silence, Ham glowering at the belching lorry in front of him, Justin staring in perplexity at the foreign country he had represented half his life. The beige Ford had overtaken them, to be replaced by a tubby motorcyclist in black leathers. In a civilised country, you can never tell.
“You’re rich, by the by,” Ham blurted, as open fields gave way to suburbia. “Not that you were exactly a pauper before, but now you’re stinking. Her father’s, mother’s, the trust, whole shooting match. Plus you’re sole trustee of her charity. She said you’d know what to do with it.”
“When did she say that?”
“Month before she lost the baby. Wanted to make sure everything was kosher in case she snuffed it. Well, what the hell was I supposed to do, for Christ’s sake?” he demanded, mistaking Justin’s silence for reproach. “She was my client, Justin. I was her solicitor. Talk her out of it? Ring you up?”
His eye on the wing mirror, Justin made appropriate soothing noises.
“And Bluhm’s the other bloody Executor,” Ham added in furious parenthesis. “Executioner more like.”
The hallowed premises of Messrs Hammond Manzini were situated in a gated cul-de-sac called Ely Place on two wormy upper floors with panelled walls hung with disintegrating images of the illustrious dead. In two hours’ time, bilingual clerks would be murmuring into grimy telephones while Ham’s ladies-in-twin-sets grappled with the modern technology. But at seven in the morning, Ely Place was deserted except for a dozen cars parked along the kerbside and a yellow light burning in the crypt of St Etheldreda’s Chapel. Labouring under the weight of Justin’s luggage, the two men clambered up four rickety flights to Ham’s office, then up a fifth to his monkish attic flat. In the tiny living-dining-kitchen hung a photograph of a slimmer Ham kicking a goal, to the jubilation of an undergraduate crowd. In Ham’s tiny bedroom where Justin was supposed to change, Ham and his bride Meg were cutting a three-tier wedding cake to the fanfares of Italian trumpeters in tights. And in the tiny bathroom where he took a shower hung a primitive oil painting of Ham’s ancestral home in coldest Northumbria which accounted for Ham’s penury.
“Bloody roof blew clean off the north wing,” he was yelling proudly through the kitchen wall while he smashed eggs and clattered pans. “Chimney stacks, tiles, weather-vane, clock, buggered to a man. Meg was out on Rosanne, thank God. If she’d been in the vegetable garden, she’d have caught the bell tower slap in the withers, whatever they are.”
Justin turned the hot tap and at once scalded his hand. “How very alarming for her,” he commiserated, adding cold.
“Sent me this extraordinary little book for Christmas,” Ham boomed, to the sizzle of bacon. “Not Meg. Tess. Happen to show it to you at all? Little book she sent me? For Christmas?”
“No, Ham, I don’t think she did—”rubbing soap into his hair in the absence of shampoo.
“Some Indian mystic chap. Rahmi Whoosit. Ring any bells? I’ll get the rest of him in a minute.”
“Afraid not.”
“All about how we should love each other without attachment. Struck me as a pretty tall order.”
Blinded with soap, Justin emitted a sympathetic growl.
“Freedom, Love and Action—that’s the title. Hell she expect me to do with freedom, love and action? I’m married, for fuck’s sake. Got a baby in the pipeline. Plus I’m a bloody Roman. Tess was a Roman herself before she jacked it in. Hussy.”
“I expect she wanted to thank you for all that running around you did for her,” Justin suggested, picking his moment, yet careful to preserve the casual note of their exchange.
Temporary disconnection from other side of wall. More sizzling, followed by heretical expletives and smells of burning.
“What running around was that then?” Ham bawled suspiciously. “Thought you weren’t supposed to know about any running around. Deadly secret, according to Tess, the running around was. ‘To be kept strictly out of reach of all Justins.’ Health warning. Put it as the subject in every e-mail.”
Justin had found a towel, but rubbing his eyes made the smarting worse. “I didn
’t know about it exactly, Ham. I sort of divined it,” he explained through the wall with the same casualness. “What did she want you to do? Blow up Parliament? Poison the reservoirs?” No answer. Ham was engrossed in his cooking. Justin groped for a clean shirt. “Well, don’t tell me she had you handing out subversive leaflets about Third World debt,” he said.
“Bloody company records,” he heard back, over more clashing of saucepans. “Two eggs right for you or one? They’re our hens.”
“One will be fine, thanks. Whatever records were they?”
“All she cared about. Any time she thought I was getting fat and comfortable: pow, in there with another e-mail about company records.” More crashing of pans deflected Ham to other paths. “Cheated at tennis, know that? In Turin. Oh yes. Little minx and self were partnered in a kiddywink knockout competition. Lied like a trooper all through the match. Every line call: out. Could be a yard in, didn’t make a blind bit of difference. Out. ‘I’m Italian,’ she said, ‘I’m allowed to.’ ‘Like hell you’re Italian,’ I said. ‘You’re English to your boots, same as me.’ God alone knows what I’d have done if we’d won. Given the cup back, I suppose. No, I wouldn’t. She’d have killed me. Oh Christ. Sorry.”
Justin stepped into the drawing room to take his place before a greasy slag-heap of bacon, egg, sausages, fried bread and tomatoes. Ham was standing with one hand crammed to his mouth, dazed by his unhappy choice of metaphor.
“What sort of companies exactly, Ham? Don’t look like that. You’ll put me off my breakfast.”
“Ownership,” said Ham through his knuckles, as he sat down opposite Justin at the tiny table. “Whole thing was about ownership. Who owned two pissy little companies in the Isle of Man. Anyone else call her Tess, d’you know?” he asked, still chastened. “Apart from me?”
“Not in my hearing. And certainly not in hers. Tess was your sole copyright.”
“Loved her rotten, you see.”
“And she loved you. What sort of companies?”
“Intellectual property. Never had it off with her, mind. Too close.”
“And in case you were wondering, it was the same with Bluhm.”
“Is that official?”
“He didn’t kill her, either. Any more than you or I did.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
Ham brightened. “Old Meg wasn’t convinced. Didn’t know Tess the way I did, you see. Special thing. Can’t be replicated. ‘Tess has chums,’ I told her. ‘Buddies. The demon sex doesn’t come into it.’ I’ll tell her what you said, if you don’t mind. Cheer her up. All that shit in the press. Sort of rebounded on me.”
“So where were these companies registered? What were their names? Do you remember?”
“’Course I remember. Couldn’t help bloody remembering, with old Tess hammering away at me every other day.”
Ham was pouring tea, clutching the teapot in both hands, one for the pot, one to keep the lid from falling off while he grumbled. The operation completed, he sat back, still nursing the teapot, then lowered his head as if he were about to charge.
“All right,” he demanded aggressively. “Name me the most secretive, duplicitous, mendacious, hypocritical bunch of corporate wide-boys it’s been my dubious pleasure to encounter.”
“Defence,” Justin suggested disingenuously.
“Wrong. Pharmaceutical. Beats Defence into a cocked hat. I’ve got it now. Knew I would. Lorpharma and Pharmabeer.”
“Who?”
“It was in some medical rag. Lorpharma discovered the molecule and Pharmabeer owned the process. Knew I would. How those chaps come up with names like that, God knows.”
“Process to do what?”
“Produce the molecule, arsehole, what do you think?”
“What molecule?”
“God knows. Same as the law but worse. Words I’ve never seen before, hope never to see ’em again. Blind the punters with science. Keep ’em in their place.”
After breakfast they went downstairs together and put the Gladstone in Ham’s strongroom next door to his office. Lips pursed for discretion, eyes lifted to the heavens, Ham spun the combination and hauled back the steel door for Justin to go in alone. Then watched from the doorway while Justin laid the bag on the floor close to a pile of age-honoured leather boxes with the firm’s Turin address embossed on the lid.
“That was only the beginning, mark you,” Ham warned darkly, affecting indignation. “A canter round the course before the real thing. After that it was names of directors of all companies owned by Messrs Karel Vita Hudson of Vancouver, Seattle, Basel plus every city you’ve heard of from Oshkosh to East Pinner. And ‘What’s the state of play regarding the much-publicised rumours of an imminent collapse of the noble and ancient house of Balls, Birmingham & Bumfluff Limited or whatever they’re called, known otherwise as ThreeBees, President for Life and Master of the Universe one Kenneth K. Curtiss, Knight?’ Did she have any more questions? you wonder. Yes, she bloody did. I told her to get it off the Internet but she said half the stuff she wanted was X-rated or whatever they do if they don’t want Joe Public looking over their shoulders. I said to her—‘Tess, old thing, Christ’s sake, this is going to take me weeks. Months, old girl.’ Did she give a tinker’s? Did she hell. It was Tess, for Christ’s sake. I’d have jumped out of a balloon without the parachute if she’d told me to.”
“And the sum of it was?”
Ham was already beaming with innocent pride. “KVH Vancouver and Basel own fifty-one per cent of the pissy Isle of Man biotechnology companies, Lor-hoojamy and Pharma-whatnot. ThreeBees Nairobi have sole import and distribution rights of said molecule plus all derivatives for the whole of the African continent.”
“Ham, you’re incredible!”
“Lorpharma and Pharmabeer are both owned by the same gang of three. Or were till they sold their fifty-one per cent. One chap, two hags. The chap is called Lorbeer. Lor plus Beer plus pharma gives you Lorpharma and Pharmabeer. The hags are both doctors. Address care of a Swiss gnome who lives in a letter box in Liechtenstein.”
“Names?”
“Lara Somebody. She’s in my notes. Lara Emrich. Got it.”
“And the other one?”
“Forget. No, I don’t. Kovacs. No first name given. It was Lara I fell in love with. My favourite song. Used to be. From Zhivago. Old Tess’s too in those days. Fuck.” A natural break while Ham blew his nose and Justin waited.
“So what did you do with these nuggets of intelligence when you’d landed them, Ham?” Justin enquired tenderly.
“Read the whole lot to her over the telephone to Nairobi. Chuffed to bits, she was. Called me her hero—”he broke off, alarmed by Justin’s expression—“not your telephone, idiot. Some mate of hers up-country. ‘You’re to go to a phone box, Ham, and you’re to call me straight back on the following number. Got a pen?’ Bossy little cow, always was. Bloody cagey about telephones, though. Bit paranoid in my view. Still, some paranoids have real enemies, don’t they?”
“Tessa did,” Justin agreed, and Ham gave him a queer look, which got queerer the longer it lasted.
“You don’t think that’s what happened, do you?” Ham asked, in a subdued voice.
“In what way?”
“Old Tess fell foul of the pharmaceutical chaps?”
“It’s conceivable.”
“But I mean, Christ—old sport—you don’t think they shut her mouth for her, do you? I mean, I know they’re not Boy Scouts.”
“I’m sure they’re all dedicated philanthropists, Ham. Right down to their last millionaire.”
A very long silence followed, broken by Ham.
“Mother. Oh Christ. Well. Tread gently, what?”
“Exactly.”
“I dropped her in the shit by making that phone call.”
“No, Ham. You broke an arm and a leg for her and she loved you.”
“Well. Christ. Anything I can do?”
“Yes. Find me a box. A stout brown
cardboard box would do. Got such a thing?”
Glad of an errand Ham charged off and, after much cursing, returned with a plastic draining tray. Crouching to the Gladstone, Justin opened the padlocks, released the leather straps and, masking Ham’s view with his back, transferred the contents to the tray.
“And now, if you would, a wad of your dullest files on the Manzini estate. Back-numbers. Stuff you keep but never look at. Enough to fill up this bag.”
So Ham found him files too: as old and dog-eared as Justin seemed to want. And helped him load them into the empty bag. And watched him buckle the bag up, and lock it. Then from his window watched him again, as he strode down the cul-de-sac, bag in hand, to hail a cab. And as Justin disappeared from view, Ham breathed “Holy Mother!” in an honest invocation to the Virgin.
“Good morning, Mr Quayle, sir. Take your bag, sir? I’ll have to run it under the X-ray, if you don’t mind. It’s the new regulations. Wasn’t like that in our day, was it? Or your father’s. Thank you, sir. And here’s your ticket, all shipshape and above-board as they say.” A dropping of the voice. “Very sorry, sir. We’re all greatly affected.”
“Good morning, sir! Nice to have you back with us.” Another dropped voice. “Deepest condolences, sir. From the wife also.”
“Our very deepest commiserations, Mr Quayle”—another voice, breathing beer fumes in his ear—“Miss Landsbury says please to go straight on up, sir. Welcome home.”
But the Foreign Office was no longer home. Its preposterous hall, built to strike terror into the hearts of Indian princes, imparted only strutting impotence. The portraits of disdainful buccaneers in periwigs no longer tipped him their familial smile.
“Justin. I’m Alison. We haven’t met. What a terrible, terrible way to get to know each other. How are you?” said Alison Landsbury, appearing with posed restraint in the twelve-foot-tall doorway of her office, and pressing his right hand in both of hers before leaving it to swing. “We’re all so, so sad, Justin. So utterly horrified. And you’re so brave. Coming here so soon. Are you really able to talk sensibly? I don’t see how you could.”