The Clayton Account (38 page)

Tom was discharged from hospital on Saturday. In the afternoon he drove to Gloucestershire with his family. He still hurt from his injuries but remained adamant not to alter his plans. The M4 appeared different now, but he kept the observation to himself. No one spoke as they passed the sign to Corston village. Until the police had completed their assessment of the scene, Corston Park was out of bounds to everyone. Jack Hornby was enraged when he learnt of the police refusal to provide protection for his grandchildren. He harassed the local constabulary, the top brass at Scotland Yard, even telephoned his MP at home. All in vain. In the end he turned to the adjutant of his former regiment, and once he had explained the circumstances a simple solution was found. Two lieutenants from the Parachute Regiment would be given two weeks’ leave. They would be delighted to accept Colonel Hornby’s invitation to fish and shoot on his estate. The Colonel had no objection if the young men wished to bring along their service pistols. A further pair of subalterns would be on standby, should another two weeks’ hospitality become available in a fortnight’s time.

With the peace of mind that the armed soldiers afforded, Tom returned to London, alone, on Sunday night. He started to play the messages on his answering machine, then struggled with the top of a Rémy bottle as he listened to Grinholm’s speech:

‘Sorry to learn about the rough time you’ve been through – such a ridiculous charge. The Directors have decided –’
decided
, Tom noted, not suggested ‘– to let you take all the time you need … unpaid leave of absence … Vladimir Kreutz is looking after all your stuff.’

Tom turned the tape off. He knew the form. If he came out clean as a whistle – Snow White clean – they would all congratulate him and break out the vintage champagne.
If
not, by the time the trial was over, Tom would have been gone from the bank three to six months. In the financial world that made you ancient history.

As a matter of reflex he flicked on his computer and was amused to see the bank had as yet neglected to close down his real-time access. He looked up the currency movements and the Zurich futures. The pound was down again. One and three-quarter cents. Good news for Tom and for his bank.

His ex-bank.

If Kreutz didn’t screw up.

Meanwhile Tom wished he had more money: he would sell sterling short with the lot. Anyway the fact remained that the pound was seriously overvalued. Industry was screaming, exports static and interest rates politically sensitive. At worst, sterling might creep down slowly. Unless something happened, or impatient speculators brought the currency into play. Then smart money would move into dollars. Or the new lovely: the Euro.

Or Swiss francs.

Perhaps, it occurred to him, the time was approaching for the gamble of a lifetime. Tom had the nerve, he knew, and it had been easy money bar the business with that punk Salazar. Now he felt the money was more his than ever.

Well, perhaps next week.

But first there was Sean.

On Monday morning, as expected, Tom was taken for a brief court appearance and formally charged with the manslaughter of Antonio Salazar. Stuart Hudson was there, accompanied by an eminent Queen’s Counsel who argued that the accusation was without merit and moved that the court dismiss the charges there and then. The police maintained that there were aspects to this case that linked the
accused
to international crime syndicates, evidence of which would be produced at the full hearing. Tom’s QC denied the allegation and assured the court this was a clear case of self-defence, but in the end the court ruled that a trial would be appropriate, to take place at the Old Bailey at a future date.

Bail was set at £200,000 with the additional condition that Tom Clayton should continue to surrender his passport and report to the police once a week. A further request for police protection was denied. Given that Clayton refused to state why the deceased Salazar should have wanted to kill him in the first place, it was deemed unreasonable to spend public money when no evidence existed of further threats to the accused’s life. His second request, that he be issued with a firearms permit for personal protection, was refused and even backfired. It drew attention to the fact that Clayton already held a shotgun certificate, which was instantly revoked, with an order that he dispose of his guns.

His legal advisors told him not to take this first round too seriously. They believed the prosecution would in the end accept Tom’s plea of self-defence. This was plain, simple police trickery, to keep him cornered while they dug deeper. Perhaps this view was correct, but it failed to afford Tom much consolation.

Later that morning he took the now familiar Underground to Heathrow. He thought of his journey along the same track when his spirits had been high, when he had outsmarted the Swiss bankers and returned home in triumph. This time Tom Clayton felt miserably alone. There was little for him to do but wait for them to come to him, for the inevitable day of reckoning when he must pay with his life. He hoped and prayed that somehow they might spare Caroline and the children.
Unless
Sean was prepared to shelter them. Sean, the man of violence.

Sean Clayton – family?

Perhaps.

At Terminal 1 Tom bought an Aer Lingus ticket. He sat quietly during the hour’s flight to Dublin and there changed to a Fokker Friendship. Through its large oval windows he took in the beauty of the old country: the Emerald Isle of many a New York fable.

The one place, as luck would have it, he could travel to from England without a passport. Thanks to British shrewdness, originally. Landed gentry, who owned half the island-nation, did not mind the Irish having political independence, but they certainly objected to requiring travel documents for weekend visits to their castles and estates. And Irish cunning in the end: for years their poorer unemployed were able to cross over the water and live off the old enemy’s social services. All this, decades before the European Union was even thought of.

The plane crossed the border into Northern Ireland’s airspace north of Cavan, then flew over Castle Balfour and past the shimmering waters of Upper Lough Erne. The narrow northern end of the lough pointed the way to Enniskillen, and beyond the city the land opened up to the splendour of Lower Lough Erne. On its northern shore, at Pettigo, the flight-path crossed back into the Republic, then started its descent towards the little airport on the isthmus in Donegal Bay.

The hired car was waiting for him and Tom set out immediately in the direction of Mount Charles. Twenty minutes later, at Dunkineely, he turned north. As he drove through the undulating landscape, he kept gazing to his left, to the spectacular peninsula that juts into the ocean between Killybegs and Ardara. Tom Clayton could not help
pondering
what abominations must have descended upon the Irish in days gone by: that people should have wanted to leave this paradise to start new lives in foreign lands. Nor could he suppress an overwhelming sense of guilt: that he’d never come to visit, not even after promising Tessa and taking her cheque which, he suddenly remembered was still buried amongst the papers on his desk. He could rationalize his behaviour in myriad ways, but still the guilt would not go away.

He finally came to Dungloe, a small but pretty village on the water’s edge. There had been pictures of Dungloe at home, old sepia photographs of narrow streets and burly men raising beer glasses. It looked prettier in the sunlight. Tom went into Cotter’s Inn to ask for directions.

A number of men stood at the bar, a few more sat nursing pints of stout at tables. All turned in unison to study the stranger. He approached the corpulent man behind the counter, presumably Mr Cotter, and asked where he might find Sean Clayton. The room went silent and Cotter continued drying a glass as he slowly walked along the bar until his pockmarked red face was level with Tom’s.

‘And who might be looking for him?’ he enquired assertively, loud enough for all to hear.

‘Thomas Clayton.’

‘You are family, then? You sound American.’ The inquisition clearly was not over.

‘I am both,’ replied Tom. ‘I’m Patrick Clayton’s grandson.’

‘Mikey’s boy?’ said a man, rising from a table. They all turned to him. He wore dark trousers and a thick, checked shirt under an open anorak. He was about the same build as Tom, same curly dark hair and deep green eyes but thirty years older. He smiled at Tom and extended his right hand.

‘Give my cousin a glass, Gerald,’ he said to the publican, then to Tom: ‘I’m Feilim. Sean’s son.’ Just four words, yet they unleashed pent-up emotions.

Tom clasped his cousin’s hardened hand and they met in a half-embrace. This was a man from a land he seldom thought about, yet he felt of his own blood, as if the bond had always been there.

And with a sudden sharp pang Tom Clayton realized that he really had no friends. Caroline? His wife. Tessa? His sister. Stuart … And that was it. Forty years old, and no other true friends. Meanwhile the patrons cheered and chanted sounds of Welcome Home.

‘I’m sorry about your father, Thomas,’ said Feilim. ‘We were all devastated when we heard.’

‘Did you know my father?’ asked Tom, surprised.

‘He was here once,’ Feilim nodded sadly.

The door opened and Sean walked in. Looking quarter of a century younger than his grand old age, he was not tall, five seven at the most, but his walk was firm, his shoulders still commanding and his eyes like open windows to an overpowering inner strength.

‘Well now, Thomas Clayton,’ he bellowed for everyone’s benefit, ‘you finally decided to come and see us, hey!’ He spoke amiably, in a north-western brogue, as the others joined in the merriment of the moment. Gerald Cotter automatically reached for a bottle of Jameson and poured Sean a double. Sean observed Tom’s near-empty glass of Murphy’s and chided the landlord: ‘And one of those for Tom as well, give the man a decent drink! You do drink whiskey, I take it, Thomas?’

Tom nodded with a grin.
That I do
, he said to himself. A few more rounds of drinks followed and a score of people were introduced. But though he stood there right next to Tom, Sean said little, just listening to the talking
and
looking at Tom with a knowing smile. Then the old man took him by the elbow and ushered him towards the door.

‘Now, we better let my nephew get some rest,’ he announced as the others bid good day in agreement. ‘Perhaps this evening we’ll come back,’ Sean winked with a wicked eye.

When they stood outside the inn, he asked if Tom had a car. As the American pointed at it, Sean nodded and suggested a short drive. They left Dungloe behind and drove up the hill towards Burtonport. From there they climbed on foot along a rocky path where Tom could sense and smell the ocean before he saw it. Sean walked in front, his step sure and sprightly. From behind, watching his movement, Tom chuckled on recalling Sweeney’s conjecture about Sean: ‘… if he is still alive.’

They reached a small promontory, a cluster of rocks on Ireland’s edge, and Sean invited Tom to sit down. Both remained silent for a while, feeling the wind come in from the Atlantic – the same Atlantic, Tom reflected, that he had observed while lying on the sand dunes in Long Island.

Another world, another life.

‘Over there,’ said Sean, pointing at the rising land to the south, ‘is Crohy Head. Beyond it, Gweebarra Bay.’ He stood, as if to get a better view, then turned around to face the north. ‘That,’ he said pointing a gnarled finger at a small island a mile offshore, ‘is Golal. And the jagged bit, that sticks out from the mainland yonder, is Bloody Foreland.’

‘And this?’ asked Tom, looking towards the larger island straight in front of where they stood.

‘That,’ said Sean smiling mischievously, ‘is Aran Island. Where we used to load the whiskey in the old days.’

Tom smiled and nodded.

‘So, what brings you here at last?’ asked Sean, sitting down again without looking at Tom.

‘I have problems, Uncle Sean.’ Tom surprised himself with the spontaneous form of address. ‘Serious problems.’

‘When I was a young boy,’ said Sean, for the moment ignoring his grand-nephew’s admission, ‘I used to come and sit here. Most days. I would just look out to sea and squint my eyes. I thought, perhaps if I tried hard enough, I would see America.’

‘Was it really bad?’

‘Ah, yes. ’Twas bad, all right.’ For a moment his eyes were misty with memories. ‘Sometimes I would stand up on that rock and shout Patrick’s name, begged him to come back and take me with him.’

‘I’m sorry, Sean. I never knew much until recently. What happened when my grandfather came back? Why did you not go with him?’

‘I was grown up by then. I had a job to do. I don’t regret it.’

‘Did Pat send money?’

‘That he did. Always. Until the day he died. He was a hard man, but when it came to Ireland he was never found wanting.’

‘Did my father ever send money?’

‘Just for the family. He was a true man of peace, young Michael. Rare quality, that. Never really understood, and Pat never pressed him. What about you? Where do you live? Have you a family?’

Tom told him all about himself, his home in England, his years in banking. And then he told of his problem, the money he had found, the man that had taken his wife before Tom killed him, and how he now realized his days were numbered. They would come back and take him one day, and though he did not frighten easily, he feared for
his
family. Tom was afraid to stay in London, he confessed. But America would be even worse.

‘Perhaps,’ he suggested cautiously, ‘we could settle here for a while. Rent a house, or something.’

‘How much money did you take?’ asked Sean bluntly.

‘Forty-three million dollars,’ Tom replied, smiling sheepishly. ‘Some of that belonged to Pat. Most of it didn’t.’

‘And what have you done with this money?’

Knowing no hedging would help him here, Tom told his great-uncle the truth. The five million he had transferred to London, the 38 million still in Zurich.