Angel Touch (31 page)

‘What about the Linton holiday camps in this country? Surely they're worth a bomb nowadays?'

McInnes pushed his chair back from the screen. ‘You'd think so, but Freddy's a funny old cove. I told you about the Countryside Commission. Virtually every site, every piece of land he owns, is tied up to the National Trust or is in a green belt or nature conservancy area. His major asset – his only asset – was his land, and he virtually gave it away. I wouldn't mind having a piece of it myself, but there's nothing you could do with it. There's no way it could be developed.'

‘But that doesn't apply to the property in France, does it?'

He winked at me. ‘You're catching on.'

 

McInnes gave me a quick lecture in company share structure, followed by a seminar on desk-top publishing. The last bit I found interesting; the bit about the company went in one ear and almost straight out of the other without a pit stop.

Roughly, though, it went something like this.

Linton Plc – the LTN abbreviation on his screen – had a thin spread of shares, about 42%, publicly owned, Sir Frederick and his family owning the rest. McInnes had identified five dealers who were market-makers in LTN and three major institutionals with an interest who were also clients of Prior, Keen, Baldwin.

‘If we use PKB to leak the suggestion that I am considering going into a partnership with Sir Frederick to develop the French end of things – I'm known to have interests in France as it is – then an unscrupulous person would have a good go at buying up any stock on the market, maybe even approaching the family for some of their allocation.'

‘And before the news got out, so the price wouldn't rise.'

‘Naturally, and by taking out the market-makers all at once, you could guarantee that.'

‘How much would the price rise – normally?'

McInnes swivelled to the WP keyboard and tapped away.

‘Shares today closed at 113p each, but there hasn't been any trading for weeks. I'd guess that if a merger was announced they could go to 350p. If the land didn't have so many restrictions, a lot more than that.'

‘But you'd double your money?' I said, wishing I had a cigarette.

‘Yes, you'd expect to.'

‘And you think because of the French connection, Cawthorne won't be able to resist it? Given his speculations over there near the Tunnel, could this be another branch of the same thing? What do you call it?'

‘A fit. Yes, it could seem as if Linton's French properties would fit with Cawthorne's Yuppie commuter homes.'

‘So – let me get this straight – we're leaking to Cawthorne the opportunity to at least double his money, possibly even get control of more land in France?'

‘Mm-mm.' McInnes smiled and nodded.

I shook my head. ‘Well, he'll certainly go for that,' I said.

‘So would I,' said McInnes, ‘if I could raise nearly five million on a credit line quickly enough.'

‘You probably could.' He made the modesty gesture, palms up. ‘Can Cawthorne?'

‘I think so, but it'll stretch him badly. He'll have to put the Exhilarator and his French land up to do it.'

‘But he could walk away with ten million.'

‘If he's willing to take the risk.'

‘Just how much of a risk is it?'

McInnes looked at his fingernails.

‘A stupid one.
If
you know that the French government is about to announce plans for a nuclear reactor near the prime Linton site in east Normandy
and
you know that Sir Frederick Linton is going to declare himself bankrupt next week.'

If I'd had a hat on, I would have taken it off.

‘You devious bastard,' I said.

‘Why, thank you, Roy.'

 

McInnes drafted himself a letter. Well, not actually a letter, more a press release. He headed it for his attention only, marked it ‘Draft Announcement: For Approval' and dated it for the next day. The text outlined a merger between Linton Plc and Glen and Island Securities, which I presumed was one of McInnes's companies, to take effect within a week. The date of the announcement was for Monday at 11.00 am, and there was also a lot of stuff about share options and cash alternatives.

He put all this up on the WP himself and then took a wedge of PKB circular paper out of a drawer and fed it into the printer. He tried one out, adjusted the margins and pressed a few buttons until a perfect copy came out. He put it in an A4 envelope without folding it and stuck a pre-printed address label on it.

‘Get PKB to send this to me by messenger first thing tomorrow, and I'll guarantee Cawthorne will be buying Linton stock before the pubs open.' As he spoke, he ripped up the first version he'd printed off and dropped it in a waste bin. Then he fiddled with the WP keyboard again.

‘Wiping clean?' I asked, tucking the envelope inside my jacket.

‘Yes. I told you, I'm staying squeaky clean on this one. When that comes tomorrow, I'll burn it. PKB won't have any knowledge of it and Cawthorne could never admit where he got his copy from. I don't have any shares in Linton. No comebacks.'

I remembered what he'd said at Sorrel's place.

‘Didn't you say it might cost you?'

‘It has. A day of my time – how do you cost that? Plus it will cost me for the information on Linton and for keeping that info out of the City until Monday at least.'

‘I won't ask how you got it.'

He levelled a finger at me, like a gun. ‘Good.'

‘But I'd like to know why.'

He sat down in the swivel chair again and did a couple of complete turns.

‘Cawthorne had a thing going with Sorrel once – a few years back when he was starting out in the City. They met on some skiing trip and went at it like knives for about six months, then he dumped her for some Sloane Ranger with a quarter claim on some title nobody's ever heard of.'

There was bitterness there.

‘And Sorrel got hurt,' I said knowingly.

‘Oh no.' He shook his head. ‘Sorrel couldn't give a monkey's. She shacked up with a heavy metal bass player two days later and forgot all about him.'

I bet she forgot where she lived, her name and other stuff too.

‘So ...?'

‘So nobody – but nobody – treats my daughter as second class.'

‘I see,' I said truthfully. I could relate. ‘But I thought all decisions in the City were taken on a cold, rational, logical, profit-motivation basis.'

‘They are,' said McInnes. ‘Until you're rich enough to indulge yourself a bit.'

 

McInnes wouldn't join me for a pint in the Clanger, even though you could see it from his office. I went anyway, partly because it really does serve a decent pint of draught Bass and partly because it has a relatively private pay-phone. I got a pound's worth of change from the barman and tried Lloyd Allen's number in Brixton. Amazingly, he was in.

‘Lloyd, it's Angel.'

‘My man. Did your scam go down?'

‘Partly, but I need more help from our motorbike friend.'

‘Lewis Luther is yours to command. For a fee, that is,' he added.

‘Agreed. You might also tell him to scout around for a new job. He shouldn't have a problem. And I'm going to need some muscular help for about an hour on Friday.'

‘What d'you mean, man? Anything heavy and you should talk to the Yardies, not me.'

I had no intention of talking to the Yardies full stop. Never would be too soon. Their homespun Jamaican blend of violence, thuggery, extortion and more violence for good measure made the Triads who now ran Chinatown look like graduate social workers.

‘I want a few lads to cause a diversion, that's all. A bit of steaming, but innocent like. Definitely not World War III, okay?'

‘In dat case, honey –' Lloyd laid it on – ‘I can offer you the Dennison boys. Three for the price of four.'

‘Sounds reasonable. Where can I reach them tomorrow afternoon?'

‘Here, if that's where you want ‘em, my man.'

‘Good enough. Oh, and Lloyd ...'

‘Yes ...'

‘There's something else.'

‘With you, my man, there usually is.'

 

I did one more thing before I soaked under the shower and slept the sleep of the truly shattered. I checked my personal war chest for cash and liquid assets and made sure my passport (well, one of them) was in order. You never know.

 

The first thing I did on the Thursday morning was get up. As stiff and bruised as I was after the Exhilarator, that was no mean feat. I vowed that I would get myself back into shape, and even thought about rejoining the Gym ‘n' Tonic club again. They should have got over the incident in the ladies' jacuzzi by now.

I was nosing Armstrong through the City by 8.00, and even with stopping off to leave the film from my Olympus at a quick-photo booth, I was outside PKB by half past.

Patterson was emerging from his early morning conference by the time I'd blagged my way past Purvis. He didn't exactly welcome me with open arms. I couldn't think why.

‘What do you want?'

‘Cup of coffee and a minute of your time.'

He thought about this, but not for long.

‘In here.' He nodded towards his office and led the way. I closed the door after me.

‘I know you're bursting to ask, so I'll tell you now; Salome's vastly improved. There, I knew you'd feel better.'

‘Is that it?'

I do hate it when people get overemotional.

‘No. I want you to get me an Airborne bike to deliver something this morning.'

‘What?'

‘An envelope.'

He snorted at that.

‘To whom?'

‘You don't wanna know.'

‘Then no bike.'

I took McInnes's envelope from my jacket and showed him the address label. His eyebrows shot up and he reached for it but I leaned back. I can do that quite well since Springsteen taught me.

‘What's in there?' Tel licked his lips.

‘A leak.'

‘About what?'

‘You don't want to know,' I said slowly. ‘Watch my lips: you do not want to know.'

He narrowed his eyes.

‘Did you bodge something together? You know bugger-all about how things happen.'

‘Oh, I wouldn't say that, Tel. I know you shouldn't wear Argyll socks with a dinner jacket, you should never tell an Irishman that Guinness is exactly the same over here, and you shouldn't listen to Leonard Cohen if you're anywhere near a razor.'

‘I meant about the City,' he said nastily. ‘You're clueless.'

‘Oh yeah, I admit that, but he isn't.'

I pointed to Innes McInnes's name on the envelope.

‘What's that got to do with it?'

‘He wrote what's inside.'

‘To himself?'

I nodded.

‘Then I don't want to know.'

‘Knew you'd see it my way, Tel,' I beamed.

 

Anna was on duty in the postroom, and she phoned for Airborne to collect the envelope. I had been a bit worried, because McInnes's office wasn't more than a brisk stroll from Gresham Street, but nobody in the City worried about biking stuff next door.

‘It sounded as if Tel was giving you a rough time,' said Anna as she handed me coffee.

‘Aw no. He's a pussycat,' I said. Then I thought about Springsteen and realised that was a stupid thing to say.

‘He's about as threatening as a Chris de Burgh LP.'

That was better.

 

The rider wasn't Lewis Luther. I couldn't see him because of the riding gear and the helmet, but he was much shorter than Lewis. Perhaps it was the Lenny Emerson that Lewis had mentioned and that Lloyd had said had just come out of chokey. What the hell, I didn't want to meet him, I just wanted to be sure that he did the usual dishonest thing. It would be a real pain if this one turned out to be a legitimate messenger.

He wasn't. He pulled in near Liverpool Street station behind the red Transit and Sorley's hand came out of the back to do the business. The envelope, resealed, was delivered to McInnes's office no more than a minute or so later than you could have reasonably expected.

The scam was rolling. It was also more or less out of my hands now.

I collected my photographs on the way back from following the despatch rider. I'd asked for enlargements, and they'd obviously had two or three goes trying to get the quality better, but for me they did just fine.