Fatal Error (12 page)

‘Dad, I don’t believe what came in the post today! Are you crazy?’

‘Not at all,’ he said. I could hear the smile in his voice, which was low, presumably so my mother wouldn’t hear. ‘I’m sure it will be an excellent investment.’

‘But, Dad. It’s a start-up! It could go bust within a year. It’s an enormous risk.’

‘That’s the point, David. We talked about it at lunch. I feel it’s about time I took a risk and what better way to take it? The Internet is going to change the way we live, even I realize that. And I have confidence in you. I can’t think of anyone else I would trust to do what you’re doing. At my age I can’t give up everything and start a company myself. But I can invest in one.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I can’t accept it.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t accept it? Is fifty thousand too little? What’s the problem?’ He was beginning to sound angry. My father rarely sounded angry.

‘It’s not that. It’s just if I lose your money I’ll feel terrible.’

‘And what if ninetyminutes.com is a runaway success? What if I could have earned ten times my money and you hadn’t let me invest? How would you feel then?’

‘Oh, Dad, come on …’

‘No. You come on. You have to admit there’s a good chance that this is going to work, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Well then?’

‘I can’t let you do this, Dad.’

‘David. I don’t believe this.’ My father’s voice was still low to prevent my mother hearing, but he sounded genuinely angry now. ‘I am capable of making up my own mind about investments, you know. I know this is high risk. I want to take a risk, just like you. And in the same way I won’t stop you from risking your career, you shouldn’t stop me from risking what is, after all, only money.’

I took a deep breath. ‘OK, Dad, I’ll think about it.’

‘David –’

‘I said, I’ll think about it. Bye.’ I hung up. I rarely fought with my father, if ever, and I felt bad. I knew the right decision was not to accept his money.

But we needed money from somewhere. Guy was finding it difficult to pin down a meeting with Torsten in Hamburg and he was still adamant he didn’t want to ask his father. Which left us with the venture capitalists.

Venture-capital firms invest in new or growing companies. Until the late 1990s they were cautious and careful. It was not unheard of for them to spend months investigating a start-up company before deciding that they did not want to invest. I knew what they were looking for: experienced management, proprietary technology and a proven method of making money. None of which Guy and I had. Which was why I had been reluctant to approach them until we had at least a website to show that we meant business.

But Guy couldn’t wait that long. And in the increasing heat of the last year of the century, neither could they. Stories were emerging of venture capitalists falling over themselves to back young entrepreneurs barely out of business school. Boo.com, an internet fashion retailer that was nothing but an idea and two hip Swedish founders who had started and sold an internet bookshop, had just raised forty million
pounds. We only needed three million to get us going. Guy saw no reason why we shouldn’t get it.

So, despite my doubts, I polished up our plan. Now all I needed was people to send it to.

12

The place was heaving. It was Tuesday, the first Tuesday of May, and I was at First Tuesday,
the
event for anyone in the internet world. It had all started six months before when a group of entrepreneurs had agreed to meet in a pub once a month to share war stories, and it had grown and grown. It was now the place to network, to find employees, office space, clients, suppliers, and that most precious commodity of all, money. I was there to make contact with venture capitalists, to give them the thirty-second ‘elevator pitch’, to collect their cards and send them our plan. Pretty straightforward, really. I was wearing a green badge, showing I was an entrepreneur. The venture capitalists were wearing red badges.

The venue was the converted warehouse of an internet consultancy company near Oxford Street, quite close to Mandrill’s offices. There must have been two hundred people there, all talking frantically. Most were my age or younger, most were dressed in T-shirts or fleeces, nearly all were men, and nearly all had green badges.

I took a deep breath and dived in. I was searching for the red badges. They were few and far between, but I soon realized how to spot them: they were the ones in the middle of tight groups of men and women all talking at once. Be forceful, I thought, pushing my way through to one such group. At its centre was a young-looking man in a suit being harangued by a voluble American who had an idea for selling wedding gifts over the net. It was clear he wasn’t going to go away until the VC had given him his card and told
him to send him a plan. There was an unruly crush of green badges in front of me vying to give their own pitches. Most of them were selling something mundane over the Internet, from babyloves.com selling gifts for babies to lastrest.com selling prepaid funeral services. I wondered who lastrest.com’s target customers were – perhaps people who woke up in the middle of the night with chest pains and nipped off to their computer to make sure their funeral was sorted before it was too late. Some of the ideas were highly technical and incomprehensible. One or two made some kind of sense. But the venture capitalist had no chance of distinguishing one from the other.

I tried to get the attention of the red badges, I really did. I managed to exchange cards with one harassed woman before being elbowed out of the way by the wedding-gift American. But otherwise, nothing. You had to be very pushy to get attention. Most of the green badges were expert attention-seekers. They left me way behind.

I retired to the gents. Standing next to me was a man in a suit. I didn’t look up at the face, but I saw the lapel. A red badge. Now, if I were a true entrepreneur I would have no compunction about foisting myself and my elevator pitch on a man while he was urinating. It was then that I discovered something about myself. I wasn’t a true entrepreneur. I kept my eyes down.

The suit next to me moved. ‘David? David Lane?’

I looked up at his face. ‘Henry, how are you?’

It turned out I knew the owner of the badge. Henry Broughton-Jones had trained with me as an accountant. He was a tall man with thinning fair hair brushed back above a high forehead. His father was a gentleman farmer in Herefordshire, and you would have thought Henry would have been happier in an agricultural college than a big firm of accountants, but in the end he had done rather well. When I
had left the firm he had been one of the rising stars groomed for eventual partnership.

‘Hassled,’ he said. ‘Severely hassled. I’ve never been to one of these before. I thought it would be a good place to look for deals, but I can barely fight them off. Here, let’s get a drink.’

We left the gents and grabbed a couple of glasses of wine. Within thirty seconds they’d spotted the red badge and were circling. Henry glowered at them. ‘Do you mind?’ he growled. ‘This is a confidential conversation here.’

‘So you’re a venture capitalist, now?’ I said.

‘Yes. Orchestra Ventures. I’ve been doing it for three years now. Left soon after you. It’s quite jolly. Crazy days, though. And you? I see you’ve gone over to the ranks of lunatic entrepreneurs.’

‘A soccer website,’ I said. ‘It’s called ninetyminutes.com.’ A hunted look appeared in Henry’s eyes. I made a quick decision. I didn’t want to spook my only venture-capitalist friend. ‘Don’t worry, we don’t need any money at the moment. I’m just here to “network”, whatever that means.’

‘Thank God,’ said Henry, relaxing.

We talked for several more minutes. He told me he was married and had two small children. They were just about to buy a cottage in Gloucestershire. I told him Gurney Kroheim was miserable and I was well off out of it. We exchanged news about mutual acquaintances and then he couldn’t fend off the green badges any longer. Just as he was being dragged away, he thrust his card into my hand. ‘Look, if you do need any money, give me a call.’

‘Will do, Henry. Good to see you.’

I fingered his card, smiling to myself, and fetched another glass of wine.

After half an hour or so, a Chinese-American in a checked shirt and neat chinos climbed up on to a table and gave a
gung-ho speech about how we were in the middle of something big. The most significant technological change to hit the world in the millennium. Right here. Right now. Tomorrow’s movers and shakers were here in this very room. Then the scrum continued as the crowd moved and shook.

I circled, looking for that rarest of species, an unattended red badge. I couldn’t see one, but I did see another face I thought I recognized. I moved closer.

She looked about thirty-five and she was wearing a blue suit with her hair scraped severely back. Downward-sloping lines edged her mouth, but her lips wore a familiar pout.

‘Mel?’

She turned to me and blinked for a second before she placed me. ‘David!’ She smiled and proffered her cheek for a kiss. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘I’m working for a start-up. An internet company. Soccer website.’

‘You’re not? Not you? The chartered accountant!’

‘I am,’ I said, grinning. ‘With Guy.’

‘No! I don’t believe it.’

‘It’s true. And it’s going well. Although we need some investors pretty badly.’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ said Mel, surveying the crowd. ‘I’m amazed you’re working with Guy. You know, after what happened in Mull and everything.’

‘That was seven years ago.’

‘Yes, but still.’

‘He’s changed.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Mel looked doubtful.

‘He has. Have you seen him recently?’

‘Not since then. In fact, I’ve more or less forgotten about him.’

‘Probably not a bad thing,’ I said. ‘Anyway, what are you up to? Still a lawyer?’

‘Yes. The only people wearing suits here are lawyers. Still at Howles Marriott. It’s going quite well, actually. I’m not a partner yet, but perhaps soon.’

‘I never had you pegged as a corporate lawyer.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t have imagined you as a dot-commer. It’s a miracle I recognized you with that hairstyle.’

‘You haven’t changed much,’ I said. It was a lie. Mel had aged more than seven years, but that’s not the kind of thing you say to an acquaintance. It was the kind of thing I would tell Guy, though.

‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘I’ve even got the odd grey hair now.’

It was true, she had. I remembered her hair as it used to be when she was eighteen, dark, with a streak of blonde. Now the streaks were grey.

‘Have you seen Ingrid?’ I asked.

‘No. Not since then,’ she replied, the enthusiasm leaving her voice.

‘Oh.’

We were silent. Both of us remembering.

Mel breathed in and sighed. She still had a fine chest, I couldn’t help noticing. Something else to tell Guy.

‘Have you any clients here?’ I asked.

‘Two or three.’

‘Can they pay their bills?’

Mel grinned. ‘So far. I’m betting the Internet will be the next hot market for lawyers. I’ve got about half a dozen internet clients at the moment. I reckon at least one of them will make it. And that could mean lots of legal work in the future.’

‘Sounds like a good strategy,’ I said. We sipped our wine. ‘Um. I wonder …’

‘Yes?’

‘This may sound a bit cheeky. But would you mind having a quick look at our shareholders’ agreement? The firm who
drew it up are entertainment lawyers Guy knows from his acting days. I’m not sure it’s quite right.’

‘No problem,’ said Mel. ‘Fax it to me tomorrow. I’ll tell you what I think. And no charge. Here’s my card.’ She handed me one.

I gave her mine. ‘One of Qwickprint’s finest,’ I said. ‘It’s funny I bumped into you. You’re the second person here tonight I know.’

‘That’s not so strange,’ said Mel. ‘Everyone our age is doing this now. There are probably two or three more people you know here you just haven’t spotted. As the man said just now, this is the place to be.’

‘He did say that, didn’t he?’

Mel stood on her toes in an effort to see over the heads. ‘Oops. Just spotted one of my clients. Speak to you tomorrow.’ With that she disappeared into the throng.

I tried to work the crowd again, but I didn’t get very far. Half an hour and only one venture capitalist’s card later I decided to call it quits.

I emerged into the cool night air feeling low. There were an awful lot of people doing the same kind of thing as Ninetyminutes, and all of them seemed pushier than me. I had read about the internet revolution in the press, but I had never seen it, felt it. And it didn’t feel right. The cautious Gurney Kroheim banker in me didn’t like it. There were a couple of people with good ideas, such as an articulate blonde woman I had spoken to who had started a company that sold cheap last-minute tickets. But most of it was rubbish. And the rubbish was getting funded.

For the last few weeks I had felt like a true entrepreneur, on the cutting edge of a new wave of technology. Now I just felt like a chartered accountant with delusions. Unlike the Chinese guy who had made the speech, I feared I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

13

July 1987, Côte D’Azur, France

Guy stared uncomprehendingly at his father standing in the doorway of our bedroom. ‘Dead? Dominique’s dead?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘How?’

Tony sighed and rubbed his eyes. ‘A drug overdose.’

‘Drug … Jesus!’

‘The police are here. They want to talk to everyone. You’d better get up.’

We staggered out of bed and I struggled to gain some control of the random thoughts colliding around my brain. Dead? Suicide? Police? Drugs? Dominique? Me? Sex? Investigation? Guy? Tony?

As I followed Guy into the garden illuminated by the first chilly fingers of dawn I had a horrible feeling that everything was going to come out. Everything.

We crossed the garden and I looked up at Dominique’s bedroom and the balcony where we had made love the previous afternoon. There were lights, shadows moving around, the intermittent flash of a photographer. There was the murmur of footsteps, voices, instructions, and the sound of a vehicle sweeping into the front courtyard.