The Talisman (50 page)

‘I could say the same for you.’

Again she giggled infectiously, and Alex began to relax. She had certainly taken him by surprise – she was not at all the type he would have expected Edward to be interested in, let alone want to marry. She slipped her arm through his as if she had known him for years, and started to tell him how she had first met Edward. Alex had never met anyone like her; as with everyone else who came in contact with Harriet, he fell instantly under her spell.

Alex went shopping with Harry to help her choose her wedding dress. She cavorted around the designer shops, tripping out of the changing rooms in creations worth thousands, the dreadful veils perched on her bouncing curls. She never seemed to tire, and Alex found her exhausting, and often infuriating. Eventually they chose a simple white silk dress in the new, short length. It was even shorter on Harriet, as she was so tall. She didn’t want a veil, choosing instead to wear a small crown of daisies.

Alex also helped Edward buy a suit, and discovered how well matched the couple really were – both were tremendously impatient, and neither had any real interest in style.

None of Harriet’s family was invited to the wedding. Harriet went to great lengths to find a chimney sweep to act as witness. Alex worried about him turning up in his filthy overalls, but Harriet roared with laughter and said she had promised to pay him extra if he did just that, and carried his brush; it was supposed to bring good luck.

On the morning of the wedding Edward was panic-stricken, and made Alex go and check that Harriet was getting ready. Between the two of them Alex was exhausted. It was not enough for Harriet for the pair of them to spend their pre-nuptial nights in separate bedrooms – they had to be in separate wings of the château. She would not sleep anywhere near the groom until she had a signed, valid contract to do so.

The two of them were boisterous, like noisy children, and very obviously in love. Edward showered gifts on his bride-to-be – little boxes of jewellery were delivered, unpacked, inspected, and laid out on Harriet’s dressing table. Alex never saw her wear a single piece. She was forever dressed in a pair of old shorts and a tee-shirt, and barefoot.

Harriet screamed for Alex – her new satin shoes were too tight. He was kept running from one wing of the château to the other as bride and groom yelled for cufflinks, knickers, socks . . . He managed to get Edward ready, and planted him in the hall to wait for Harriet. He was about to collect her when she called down the stairs, ‘Both of you close your eyes and hum the “Wedding March”, I’m coming down . . .’

The brothers stood side by side, humming in unison, then both opened their eyes and stopped at the same time. Harriet was moving slowly down the stairs, the white dress setting off her golden tan, the daisy garland framing her face. She was like a child, looking so innocent it was hard to believe she was nearly twenty-nine. Alex had grown to understand why Edward had been obsessed with her, wanted her – now he saw something else about her he had never noticed before. Harriet resembled their mother, in the colour of her hair, her tallness, and her smile.

Edward whispered, ‘I love her, Alex, my God, I do love her.’

It was not until they were sitting in the registrar’s office that Alex realized Harriet was barefoot. She gave him a sweet, secretive smile, and turned to Edward with such adoration that Alex found himself close to tears.

In a way, Alex was happy to be going back to London now. It was a long time since he had tended his beloved mother’s grave. She could be proud now, happy – her sons, the brothers, were together again. Alex did not yet know just how wealthy Edward was, but he was soon to find out.

A
lex, with Mr and Mrs Edward Barkley, returned to London. Alex moved in to Edward’s manor house at Greenwich. The heavy, flocked wallpaper, the windows draped in velvet, the motley collection of furniture from Tudor to Victorian, appalled Alex’s new-found taste. Squashed in alongside antiques were modern leather sofas, anything that had ever taken Edward’s fancy was purchased without a thought of its matching or suiting the manor. There was a sense of decadence, of weight, to the house which Alex found overpowering. Among Edward’s purchases were many old oil paintings, a selection of which hung down the wide, sweeping staircase. Edward surveyed his home with pride, and indicated the portraits. ‘This is your new family, aunts, uncles, parents – take your pick. I got us a good cross-section of ancestors – army fellas and a few sea captains.’

Alex unpacked his bags and gazed out of the bedroom window, across the river. There was the office block, the Barkley Company Ltd sign facing the manor. He was ill at ease – he had only been away five years and yet he felt as if it had been a lifetime. Edward pounded up the stairs, shouting for Alex to get a move on as he wanted to take him to the office.

Harriet rushed from room to room, shouting down the curved staircase. She stuck her head over the banister. ‘What time do we expect you back?’

Edward was already walking out to the drive. He waved and said they would be late, then gestured for Alex to get a move on. It was Alex who blew Harriet a kiss and said, ‘I’ll get him to call you – see you later.’

Alex had met many of Edward’s employees, and his head spun. They all shook his hand, addressing him as ‘Mr Barkley’. Edward showed him off as though he were a prize racehorse, laughing and joking, telling stories about how he managed to persuade his brother to leave their estate in France. Edward carried bundles of magazines featuring the château. No one questioned his story about Alex, or Alex’s position as his partner. It was unnerving, as if they had somehow been expecting him.

At long last Alex made it to the inner sanctum, the top floor. Edward flung open the door to an empty office and bowed. ‘I’m right next door. You employ as many secretaries as you need, Miss Henderson here will show you the ropes.’

Miss Henderson, a plain nervous woman in her late thirties, gave Alex a small nervous smile and bade him welcome.

‘I’ll need a desk, a chair, anything will do for now, a telephone and a good calculator.’

Miss Henderson made fast shorthand notes as Edward roared for her to hurry to his office. She excused herself, and left Alex alone in the empty room. It was not empty for long as everything he had requested came to him with remarkable speed. He set to work, and at lunchtime Miss Henderson brought in coffee and sandwiches. Two secretaries followed behind her with arms full of files. Alex already had two stacks either side of his makeshift desk. He looked enquiringly at Miss Henderson.

‘Mr Edward has instructed me to bring all the company files to you. He said he will be back in two to three weeks, something unexpectedly turned up. The car keys and house keys are in reception.’

Although stunned, Alex said nothing. For Edward to up and leave on the first day, without a word, amazed him. But he had little time to be fazed by his brother’s disappearance as the office began to fill up with files, brought in by four typists.

It was after eight when Alex received a telephone call from Harriet. He had completely forgotten to ring her as he had promised. She went very quiet when told that Edward had been called away on business, so Alex made the excuse that it had been very urgent. Harriet hung up.

Over the next few days Alex hardly saw Harriet, as he left very early each morning and returned late. He had made up his mind to move as soon as he could find a suitable house.

One evening when he arrived home, exhausted, he discovered Harriet, covered in paint, decorating one of the bedrooms. The paint was a very bright yellow, and he raised his eyebrows. ‘This the nursery?’

He was surprised at her sharp reaction to his innocent question.

‘No, no . . . it’s going to be my studio – there won’t be any nursery. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get on, I want this finished as a surprise.’

Alex put the brittleness of her manner down to his imagination, his tiredness. Later, alone in his room, he put a call through to Ming. Her soft voice soothed him, and she agreed to come to London as soon as he had found a suitable house. She mentioned that her company was doing very well, and she would have lots of ideas and fabrics to help furnish his new home.

Alex began the mammoth task of reviewing the company files. They continued to be brought into the office all week, and he worked on them throughout each day. The only reason he took time off from the office was to view houses. Eventually he found one to his liking in Mayfair.

There was no word from Edward, where he was or what he was doing, and Alex simply worked on. No one interrupted him except Miss Henderson, who kept up a constant stream of fresh, black coffee.

Exhausted, his eyes red-rimmed, Alex walked beside the river. He had worked day and night for a month, and now he was drained. He was due to move into his own house, but he waited for Edward to return, waited in trepidation and anger, combined with disbelief. The first two days of sifting through his brother’s files had been an eye-opener, but then it went beyond that. Edward Barkley had amassed a vast network of companies, many offshore, with so many people, so many illegal transactions, that Alex was stunned that his brother had got away with it. The frauds were like a spider’s web, weaving and interlocking. There were fake firms as fronts, covering insurance policies in Panama, Brazil . . . classic cases of ships losing cargoes, the losses obviously fictitious. In one case Edward had sold a cargo of olive oil to a small company at a very low price. The ship had put to sea and blown up, but as well as the insurance payment Edward had been paid for the cargo. Two more ships had supposedly gone down with their cargoes, only this time the ships didn’t even sink – oil streaks were left on the ocean, but the ships sailed into a port, were repainted, renamed and sold . . . and that was just one of Mr Edward Barkley’s scams. The list was endless, from small-time fiddles to big-time fraud. The details of the pay-offs read like a telephone directory: government officials, Lloyd’s underwriters, Stock Exchange runners. Edward had so many illegal businesses that Alex could hardly keep count.

The building firm employed two hundred men, and it paid wages for two hundred, but Edward actually had over five hundred men working for him on the construction side alone. He found it as beneficial to save two pounds as he did two million.

The Barkley Company actually owned only the fifteenth floor of the tower block, the rest belonged to different companies – but all those companies were, in fact, owned by Edward. Alex had seen turnaround businesses before, but this was on a different scale, in a different league . . . and the money was being constantly shifted, like dogs on a racetrack. The property developments were vast, the net spread right across London. Blocks of apartments were bought, given a lick of paint and sold again within days. Edward seemed to have a monopoly on blocks of flats coming up for sale – leaseholders were bought out, and the buildings were sold at three times the purchase price with vacant possession. Edward was pushing the property boom forward, but he held on to large areas of prime building land. To enable him to do this he had to have a very fast turnover on the properties.

Car parks appeared on bomb sites, bringing in an incredible amount of cash. Some of the takings were declared, the rest was diverted into housing developments. How could tax officers know how much money a car park took each day?

Alex went through lists of numbered companies in detail. They were on separate sheets, and were obviously smaller than the others Alex had examined. They had no names as such, simply code numbers, and it was obviously all some kind of fraud. The business ranged from toiletries to household and fancy goods for the wholesale trade. Under the heading of ‘Outlets’ were the same businesses again, plus over fifty warehouses dotted all over South London. Then there were scrapyards, transport companies, delivery companies . . . Alex calculated that the number of staff required to operate all these must run into hundreds. There were no names, no payroll details, no accounts. The scrapyards collected anything from household waste to industrial and government assignments. He began checking each one to try to make sense of it, and details of more fraudulent transactions began to emerge.

Many of the proceeds Edward had ploughed into housing estates, but no accounts were attached. Alex kept on matching tax numbers, and realized that Edward had been using false numbers and channelling goods in quick buy-and-sell transactions that, taken together, were so immense Alex could only surmise that he had been handling cash flows of between one and two million, and recorded none of it.

Miss Henderson buzzed through to Alex’s office. ‘Mr Edward has just returned, sir. You asked to be informed immediately.’

‘Thank you, Miss Henderson.’

Alex checked his watch, looked around his office. The whole room had been redesigned, with hi-tech equipment: telex machines, calculators, direct lines to the Stock Exchange, all modern and economical, streamlined and efficient. Alex pressed his fingertips together, drew a deep breath. He was going to have a showdown, and he wouldn’t back off.

Edward’s office door was ajar, the keys dangling in the lock. As Alex entered, he turned and waved for him to sit down. He was on the telephone, so Alex sat in a heavy leather wing chair and surveyed the room. He had not been in the office before, the door was kept locked. There were the same heavily built panelled walls, a carved stone mantel with a false coal fire, and a plum-red carpet. The desk was massive, with huge claw feet. A couple of wing chairs were the only other furniture in the room. The desktop was empty apart from a row of telephones. Alex smiled to himself at his brother’s obvious taste for the old-fashioned, old-world style of living; the room could have been lifted straight from the manor. Somehow it matched Edward – he was so tall, his frame running slightly to fat, but his shoulders were like an athlete’s. The ever-present cigar was sticking out of his mouth. ‘Fine, tell them we’re not interested . . . Yes, tell them that. They refused the first offer, tell them it goes down every week they delay, it’s up to them . . . Maybe, but I also happen to know the company’s going bankrupt, so we’ll see how they react . . . fine, call me.’