Be Careful What You Wish For

36

8.53, Monday morning

DIEGO MARTINEZ checked his watch. He couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He looked up and down the crowded corridor to make sure there was no sign of the steward, then pulled down the window, reached outside for the handle and opened the door. He jumped off the train and landed on the tracks.

Someone shouted, ‘You can’t do that!’

He didn’t waste his time pointing out that he already had.

He began running towards the well-lit station, and he must have covered a couple of hundred yards before the platform loomed up in front of him. He couldn’t see the astonished looks on the faces of the passengers staring out of the carriage windows as he shot past them.

‘It must be a matter of life or death,’ one of them suggested.

Diego kept on running until he reached the far end of the platform. He took out his wallet on the move, and had extracted his ticket long before he reached the barrier. The ticket collector looked up at him and said, ‘I was told The Night Scotsman wouldn’t be arriving for at least another fifteen minutes.’

‘Where’s the nearest phone box?’ Diego shouted.

‘Just over there,’ the ticket collector said, pointing to a row of red boxes. ‘You can’t miss them.’

Diego dashed across the crowded concourse, trying to grab a handful of coins from a trouser pocket on the run. He came to a halt outside the six phone boxes; three were occupied. He pulled open a door and checked his change, but he didn’t have four pennies; one short.

‘Read all about it!’

He swung round, spotted the paperboy and began running towards him. He went straight to the front of a long queue, handed the lad half a crown and said, ‘I need a penny.’

‘Sure thing, guv,’ said the paperboy, who assumed he was desperate to go to the lavatory, and quickly gave him a penny.

Diego dashed back to the phone boxes and didn’t hear him say, ‘Don’t forget your change, sir,’ and ‘What about your newspaper?’ He opened a door to be greeted with the words, Out of Order. He barged into the next box just as a startled woman was opening the door. He picked up the phone, pressed four pennies into the black box and dialled CITY 416. Moments later he heard a ringing tone.

‘Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up!’ he shouted. A voice finally came on the line.

‘Capel and Company. How may I help you?’

Diego pressed button A and heard the coins drop into the box. ‘Put me through to Mr Alexander.’

‘Which Mr Alexander, A., D. or W.?’

‘Hold on,’ said Diego. He placed the receiver on top of the box, took out his wallet, extracted Mr Alexander’s card and quickly picked up the phone again. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘David Alexander.’

‘He’s not available at the moment. Can I put you through to another broker?’

‘No, put me through to David Alexander immediately,’ demanded Diego.

‘But he’s on the line to another client.’

‘Then get him off the line. This is an emergency.’

‘I’m not allowed to interrupt a call, sir.’

‘You can and you will interrupt him, you stupid girl, if you still hope to have your job tomorrow morning.’

‘Who shall I say is calling?’ asked a trembling voice.

‘Just put me through!’ shouted Diego. He heard a click.

‘Are you still there, Mr Hardcastle?’

‘No, he’s not. This is Diego Martinez, Mr Alexander.’

‘Ah, good morning, Mr Martinez. Your timing couldn’t be better.’

‘Tell me you haven’t sold my father’s Barrington’s shares.’

‘But I have, in fact, just before you came on the line. I’m sure you’ll be delighted to hear that one customer took all one million two hundred thousand of them – in normal circumstances it might have taken two, possibly even three weeks to offload them all. And I even got a shilling more than the opening price.’

‘How much did you sell them for?’

‘One pound and nine shillings. I have the sale order in front of me.’

‘But they were two pounds and eight shillings when the market closed on Friday afternoon.’

‘That’s correct, but there seems to have been a great deal of activity in this stock over the weekend. I assumed you’d be aware of that, and it was one of the reasons I was so delighted to get them all off the books so quickly.’

‘Why didn’t you try to contact my father to warn him that the shares had collapsed?’ shouted Diego.

‘Your father made it clear that he would not be available over the weekend, and wouldn’t be returning to London until tomorrow morning.’

‘But when you saw the share price had collapsed, why didn’t you use your common sense and wait until you’d spoken to him?’

‘I have your father’s written instructions in front of me, Mr Martinez. They could not be clearer. His entire holding of Barrington’s stock was to be placed on the market when the Exchange opened this morning.’

‘Now listen to me, Alexander, and listen carefully. I’m ordering you to cancel that sale and get his shares back.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. Once a transaction has been agreed, there is no way of reversing it.’

‘Has the paperwork been completed?’

‘No, sir, but it will have been before the close of business this evening.’

‘Then don’t complete it. Tell whoever bought the shares there’s been a mistake.’

‘The City doesn’t work like that, Mr Martinez. Once a transaction has been agreed, there’s no going back, otherwise the market would be in perpetual turmoil.’

‘I’m telling you, Alexander, you will reverse that sale, or I will sue your company for negligence.’

‘And I’m telling you, Mr Martinez, that if I did, I would be up in front of the Stock Exchange council, and would lose my licence to trade.’

Diego changed tack. ‘Were those shares purchased by a member of the Barrington or Clifton families?’

‘No, they were not, sir. We carried out your father’s instructions to the letter.’

‘So who did buy them?’

‘The chairman of an established Yorkshire bank, on behalf of one of his clients.’

Diego decided the time had come to try another approach, one that had never failed him in the past. ‘If you were to mislay that order, Mr Alexander, I will give you one hundred thousand pounds.’

‘If I did that, Mr Martinez, I would not only lose my licence, but end up in jail.’

‘But it would be cash, so no one would be any the wiser.’

‘I am the wiser,’ said Alexander, ‘and I shall be reporting this conversation to my father and brother at the next partners’ meeting. I must make my position clear, Mr Martinez. This firm will not be doing business with you, or any member of your family, in the future. Good day, sir.’

The line went dead.

‘Do you want the good news or the bad news first?’

‘I’m an optimist, so give me the good news.’

‘We pulled it off. You’re now the proud owner of one million two hundred thousand shares in the Barrington Shipping Company.’

‘And the bad news?’

‘I need a cheque for £1,740,000, but you’ll be pleased to hear that the shares have gone up four shillings since you bought them, so you’ve already made a handsome profit.’

‘I’m grateful, Cedric. And as we agreed, I’ll cover any losses you made over the weekend. That’s only fair. So what happens next?’

‘I’ll be sending one of our associate directors, Sebastian Clifton, up to Grimsby tomorrow with all the paperwork for you to sign. With such a large sum involved, I’d prefer not to entrust it to the vagaries of the postal service.’

‘If that’s Jessica’s brother, I can’t wait to meet him.’

‘It most certainly is. He should be with you around noon tomorrow, and once you’ve signed all the certificates, he’ll bring them back to London.’

‘Tell him that, like you, he’s about to have a gourmet experience, the finest fish and chips in the world, eaten out of yesterday’s Grimsby Evening Telegraph. I certainly won’t be taking him to some fancy restaurant with a tablecloth and plates.’

‘If it was good enough for me, it’ll be good enough for him,’ said Cedric. ‘I look forward to seeing you next Monday at the AGM.’

‘We’ve still got several other problems,’ said Sebastian after Cedric had put the phone down.

‘And what might they be?’

‘Although Barrington’s share price has already begun to bounce back, we mustn’t forget that Fisher’s letter of resignation will be released to the press on Friday. The suggestion from a board member that the company is facing bankruptcy could send the stock tumbling again.’

‘That’s one of the reasons you’re going to Grimsby tomorrow,’ said Cedric. ‘Fisher is coming in to see me at twelve, by which time you’ll be enjoying the best fish and chips in the land with a side order of mushy peas.’

‘And what’s the other reason?’ asked Sebastian.

‘I need you to be out of the way when I see Fisher. Your presence would only remind him where my true allegiance lies.’

‘He won’t be a pushover,’ warned Seb, ‘as my uncle Giles discovered on more than one occasion.’

‘I don’t intend to push him over,’ said Cedric. ‘On the contrary. I plan to prop him up. Any other problems?’

‘Three actually: Don Pedro Martinez, Diego Martinez and, to a lesser extent, Luis Martinez.’

‘I am reliably informed that those three are all finished. Don Pedro is facing bankruptcy, Diego could be arrested at any moment for attempted bribery, and Luis can’t even blow his nose unless his father hands him the handkerchief. No, I think it won’t be too long before those three gentlemen are taking a one-way trip back to Argentina.’

‘I still have a feeling that Don Pedro will try to exact the last possible ounce of revenge before he departs.’

‘I don’t think he’d dare to go anywhere near the Barrington or Clifton families at the moment.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about my family.’

‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ said Cedric. ‘I can take care of myself.’

‘Or even you.’

‘Then who?’

‘Samantha Sullivan.’

‘I don’t think that’s a risk even he’d be willing to take.’

‘Martinez doesn’t think like you . . .’

Monday evening

Don Pedro was so angry it was some time before he could speak. ‘How did they get away with it?’ he demanded.

‘Once the market closed on Friday and I’d left for Scotland,’ said Diego, ‘someone began to sell a large number of Barrington’s shares in New York and Los Angeles, and then more of them when the market opened in Sydney this morning, finally getting rid of the last few in Hong Kong, while we were all asleep.’

‘In every sense of the word,’ said Don Pedro. Another long pause followed, and again no one considered interrupting. ‘So how much did I lose?’ he eventually said.

‘Over a million pounds.’

‘Did you find out who was selling those shares?’ spat out Don Pedro, ‘because I’d be willing to bet it’s the same person who picked mine up this morning at half the price.’

‘I think it must be someone called Hardcastle, who was on the line when I interrupted David Alexander.’

‘Cedric Hardcastle,’ said Don Pedro. ‘He’s a Yorkshire banker who sits on the board of Barrington’s and always backs the chairman. He’s going to regret this.’

‘Father, this isn’t Argentina. You’ve lost almost everything, and we already know the authorities are looking for any excuse to deport you. Perhaps the time has come to drop this vendetta.’

Diego saw the open palm coming, but he didn’t flinch.

‘You don’t tell your father what he can and cannot do. I’ll leave when it suits me, and not before. Is that understood?’ Diego nodded. ‘Anything else?’

‘I can’t be absolutely certain, but I think I spotted Sebastian Clifton at King’s Cross when I got on the train, although he was some distance away.’

‘Why didn’t you check?’

‘Because the train was about to leave, and—’

‘They’d even worked out that they couldn’t go ahead with their plan if you didn’t get on The Night Scotsman. Clever,’ said Don Pedro. ‘So they must also have had someone at Glenleven watching our every move, otherwise how could they have known you were on your way back to London?’

‘I’m certain that no one followed me when I left the hotel. I checked several times.’

‘But someone must have known you were on that train. It’s too much of a coincidence that the very evening you travel on The Night Scotsman, it’s an hour and a half late for the first time in years. Can you remember anything unusual happening during the journey?’

‘A whore called Kitty tried to pick me up, and then the communication cord was pulled—’

‘Too many coincidences.’

‘Later I saw her whispering to the chief steward, and he smiled and walked away.’

‘A prostitute and a steward couldn’t hold up The Night Scotsman for an hour and a half on their own. No, someone with real authority must have been on that train pulling the strings.’ Another long pause. ‘I think they saw us coming, but I’m going to make damn sure they don’t see us coming back. To do that, we’ll have to be as well organized as they are.’

Diego didn’t offer an opinion in this one-sided conversation.

‘How much cash have I got left?’

‘Around three hundred thousand when I last checked,’ said Karl.

‘And my art collection went on sale in Bond Street last night. Agnew assured me it ought to fetch over a million. So I’ve still got more than enough resources to take them on. Never forget, it doesn’t matter how many minor skirmishes you lose, as long as you win the final battle.’

Diego felt this was not the right moment to remind his father which of the two generals had voiced that opinion at Waterloo.

Don Pedro closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair and said nothing. Once again, no one attempted to interrupt his thoughts. Suddenly his eyes opened and he sat bolt upright.

‘Now listen carefully,’ he said, turning his gaze on his younger son. ‘Luis, you will be responsible for bringing the Sebastian Clifton file up to date.’

‘Father,’ Diego began, ‘we’ve been warned—’

‘Shut up. If you don’t want to be part of my team you can leave now.’ Diego didn’t move, but he felt the insult more than he had the slap. Don Pedro turned his attention back to Luis. ‘I want to know where he lives, where he works, and who his friends are. Do you think you can manage that?’

‘Yes, Father,’ said Luis.

Diego didn’t doubt that if his brother had a tail, it would be wagging.

‘Diego,’ Don Pedro said, looking back at his older son. ‘You’ll go down to Bristol and visit Fisher. Don’t let him know you’re coming, better to take him by surprise. It’s now even more important that he hands in his resignation letter to Mrs Clifton on Friday morning, and then releases it to the press. I want the business editor of every national newspaper to get a copy, and I expect Fisher to be available to any journalist who wants to interview him. Take a thousand pounds with you. Nothing concentrates Fisher’s mind better than the sight of cash.’

‘Perhaps they’ve got to him as well,’ suggested Diego.

‘Then take two thousand. And Karl,’ he said, turning to his most trusted ally, ‘I’ve saved the best for you. Book yourself on the sleeper for Edinburgh and find that whore. And when you do, be sure to give her a night she’ll never forget. I don’t care how you find out, but I want to know who was responsible for that train being held up for an hour and a half. We’ll all meet again tomorrow evening. By then I’ll have had a chance to visit Agnew’s and find out how the sale is going.’ Don Pedro was silent for some time before he added, ‘I have a feeling we’re going to need a large amount of cash for what I have in mind.’