Fatal Error

1

September 1999, Clerkenwell, London

‘Are you ready?’

Guy was smiling at me. A smile that held confidence and anxiety in equal proportion. The confidence was there for all to see. Only I, his friend for seventeen years, could see the anxiety.

I glanced around the large room with its white-painted brick walls and blue pipes, its cheap desks bearing expensive computers, its chairs in bright green and purple, the table football and the pinball machine, both at rest, both ignored, and the whiteboards covered with scribbles detailing flowcharts, timetables, schedules and missed deadlines. The room was bustling with young men and women in T-shirts and combat trousers tapping away at keyboards, staring at screens, talking on telephones, rushing from desk to desk, pretending that this was just a normal day.

It wasn’t.

Today we would find out whether ninetyminutes.com, the company Guy and I had founded a mere five months before, had a future.

‘I’m ready.’ I gathered together the papers I would need for the board meeting. ‘Do you think he’ll go for it?’

‘Of course he’ll go for it,’ said Guy. He took a deep breath and smiled again, banishing the anxiety, pumping up the self-confidence, winding up the charm. Guy had charisma, and he would need it today, even for his father. Especially for his father.

He was thirty-one, just a few months older than me. He looked younger, boyish even. He had short blond hair, high cheekbones, bright blue eyes, a mobile, delicate mouth. He dressed cool: white T-shirt under a black designer suit. But he had an edge. Something sharp that lay just beneath his finely structured features. It was a hint of danger, a hint of unpredictability, a touch of cruelty perhaps, or perhaps melancholy. It was difficult to say exactly what it was, or even how it was betrayed, whether by a glint in his eye or a hardening of his mouth. But everyone saw it. Women, men, children for all I knew. It was what attracted people to him. It was what made people follow him.

It was how he usually got his way.

The boardroom was a glass-encased bowl at one end of the open-plan office. The table could seat twelve, which was eight too many for our board. There were only four directors of Ninetyminutes: Guy was Chief Executive Officer, I was Finance Director, Guy’s father Tony Jourdan was Chairman and the fourth director was Patrick Hoyle, Tony’s lawyer.

Although Guy and I ran the company, Tony had put up most of the money and held eighty per cent of the shares. He also held eighty per cent of the votes. Patrick was there to say ‘Yes, Tony,’ whenever necessary. There were other shareholders, all Ninetyminutes employees, including Guy’s brother, but none of them had a seat on the board. It was up to Guy and me to fight their corner.

This was our second board meeting. They were held on the third Monday of the month and Tony and his lawyer had flown to London from their homes on the French Riviera to attend. We were already settling into a pattern. It began with Guy outlining the company’s progress. Which was good. Astoundingly good. We had founded ninetyminutes.com the previous April with the aim of creating the Internet’s number-one soccer website. Somehow we had managed to get a site up and running by the beginning of August. It provided commentary, gossip, analysis, match reports and statistics about every club in the English Premier League. It had been well received, with great coverage in the press. More importantly visitors were flocking to the site. In our first full month on-line we had had 190,000 visitors and the numbers were climbing strongly week on week. We now had twenty-three employees and were aggressively hiring more.

Guy went into our plans for the rest of the year. More writers, more match reports, more commentary. Alliances with a bookmaker to enable our visitors to gamble on soccer results. And the gearing up of e-commerce. We were planning to sell club and national kit off the site as well as ninetyminutes.com’s own branded clothing. This was Guy’s big idea: build a brand on the Net and then make money from selling fashionable sportswear on the back of it.

Tony Jourdan listened closely as Guy spoke. He had been a spectacularly successful property developer in the seventies, but had retired at an early age to the South of France. Too early. It was clear that he missed the cut and thrust of business, and he took his duties as chairman of Ninetyminutes seriously. He looked much like his son, but smaller. His own fair hair was turning a sandy grey. He had the same blue eyes, twinkling out of a deeply tanned face, and the same easy charm that could be turned on at will. But he was tougher. Much tougher.

It was my turn. Guy had done the easy stuff. Now Tony was warmed up it was time for the crunch.

I referred everyone to the board papers. ‘As you can see our loss this month will be slightly less than budgeted. I’m hopeful we’ll manage to keep that through to the end of the year, especially if we begin to see some good advertising revenues come in.’

‘But still a loss?’ Tony said.

‘Oh, yes. That was always in the plan.’

‘And when do you expect to turn in a profit?’

‘Not until year three.’

‘Year three? That’s 2001, isn’t it?’ Tony said, a note of mockery creeping into his voice.

‘Probably 2002,’ I answered.

‘Our funds won’t last that long.’

‘No,’ I replied patiently. ‘We’ll have to raise more.’

‘We’ll need cash to gear up for the e-commerce phase,’ added Guy.

‘All of this was in the plan,’ I said.

‘And where is this cash going to come from?’ asked Tony.

‘Actually, we have an idea for that,’ Guy said.

‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Over the last few months we’ve been talking to a firm called Orchestra Ventures. They’ve seen what we’ve been doing and they like it. They want to invest ten million pounds. It’ll be enough to finance our growth plans and take us through to next year.’

Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘Ten million, huh? And what do they want for their ten million?’

‘It’s all here,’ I said, passing copies of a term sheet to Tony and Hoyle. The sheet outlined the terms under which Orchestra Ventures would make their investment. They were the product of several days of hard negotiating.

Tony scanned it quickly. Then he tossed it on to the table. ‘This is crap,’ he said. His blue eyes were cold. No sign of the famous Jourdan charm. ‘The way I read this, my equity stake goes down from eighty per cent to twenty per cent.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘After all, they’re putting up ten million quid. You invested two.’

‘But management’s stake is sticking at twenty per cent. Do Orchestra Ventures expect me to give up some of my equity to you?’

‘Well, that’s not quite the way it will be done.’

‘But that’s the overall effect, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I admitted.

‘Why on earth do they think I should do that?’

‘They think we need a decent equity stake to give us an incentive.’

‘They do, do they?’ Tony let his contempt for that idea show. ‘But I was the one who stumped up the cash when you came begging to me. When you’d been to everyone else and no one was prepared to touch you. I deserve to make a decent profit.’

‘You will make a profit,’ I said.

‘And Ninetyminutes will have the funding to take us on to the next stage and beyond,’ said Guy.

Tony leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘You boys don’t have a clue about this, do you?’

If Tony was trying to bait me, he nearly succeeded. But I just managed to keep control. ‘And why is that?’ I asked through gritted teeth.

‘Because you give away everything to the first mug who’s willing to back you. Now that’s fine when I’m the mug. But not when it’s my equity stake you’re giving away.’

‘So what do you suggest?’ Guy asked.

‘Bootstrap it,’ Tony said. ‘Get some cash flow into the company. Then use the cash to expand. Better yet, borrow on the back of it.’

‘But that’ll be too slow!’ Guy protested. ‘If we’re going to dominate this space, we need cash now. And more in six months’ time.’

‘Not on these terms, you don’t.’

‘So where do you suggest we get this cash flow?’ I asked.

‘Skin.’

‘Skin?’

‘Yeah, skin. You know. Pics of women without clothes on. And men, for that matter.’

I flinched.

Tony ignored me. ‘Last week I bumped into an old friend from my property days. Joe Petrelli. Smart guy. He has a nose for cash flow, always has. He tells me the only money being made on the Internet at the moment is in skin.’

I had heard that too. But I didn’t like it.

‘People rack up a fortune on their credit cards downloading dirty pictures,’ Tony went on. ‘It’s a licence to print money.’

‘I can’t see what this has to do with us,’ said Guy. But I was sure he could.

‘It’s a perfect fit,’ said Tony. ‘Sign up the punters with football, and then reel them in with links to a porn site. Joe can put us in touch with the guys he deals with in LA.’

Guy and I sat stunned.

‘What do you think, Patrick?’ Tony asked.

‘Great idea, Tony,’ Hoyle said. ‘These losses worry me. We have to do something to turn them around. Footie and totty, a great combination.’ He gave a deep chuckle at his own skilful use of language, a low rumble that shook his broad shoulders. He was a huge fat man with several chins and a sweating brow. His merriment just seemed to underline the sleaziness of the whole proposition.

‘If we turn ourselves into a porn site we’ll never attract respectable investors,’ I protested.

‘We won’t need them,’ said Tony. ‘We’ll have our own cash to spend. Guy?’

We all turned to Guy. I prayed that he would be able to come up with an effective response. I had less than no desire to count the credit card payments of sad men downloading computer porn, however much money there was in it.

Guy stared hard at Tony. It was a cold stare, lacking the affection or even the respect of a son for his father. If Guy was angry, he was controlling it. It was the stare of someone assessing an enemy, thinking through his weaknesses, weighing options.

Eventually, he spoke, ‘Let’s stand back a bit here,’ he said. ‘My objective when I first dreamed up this company was to make it the foremost soccer website in Europe. If we can do that, the site will be worth hundreds of millions, given the valuations we’re seeing at the moment. That’s much more important than a few hundred thousand in the P and L. I can see a link to a pornography site would help our cash flow,’ he nodded towards his father. ‘But it would make it that much harder to reach our objective. It would take the whole site a long way downmarket. So I don’t think we should do it. We’re better off going for outside investment.’

‘From Orchestra?’

‘Yes.’

‘The bunch of crooks who want to steal my equity?’

‘Tony,’ I said, ‘you’ll end up with a smaller slice of a much larger pie—’

‘Don’t give me that apple-pie bullshit,’ Tony snapped. ‘I heard it dozens of times in my property days and I ignored it every time. You know what, Guy?’ He was speaking to his son now, his voice hard. I was out of the picture. ‘I always kept the pie. The whole pie. And I got rich as a result. That looks like a lesson you need to learn.’

‘So are you saying no to Orchestra?’ Guy said, struggling successfully to keep his tone reasonable.

‘I’m not just saying no. I’m saying I want you to get hold of Joe Petrelli and find out what he does and how he does it. We’ll discuss it at next month’s board meeting. Sooner if need be.’

This was worse than we had expected. We had known Tony would be unhappy with the dilution of his equity stake, but we hadn’t expected him to start dictating the strategy of the company. And in such a repulsive direction, too.

‘This is my company,’ Guy said in a low voice. ‘And I decide what we do with it.’

‘Wrong,’ said Tony. ‘I own eighty per cent of the shares. I decide what gets done. You do it.’

Guy glanced at me. The anger was burning in his eyes. ‘That’s not acceptable,’ he said.

Tony held his son’s stare. ‘That’s the way it’s going to be.’

There was silence for what seemed like an age. Hoyle and I watched the two men. We were no part of this. This was about much more than who controlled Ninetyminutes.

Then Guy closed his eyes, slowly, deliberately. He took a deep breath and opened them again.

‘In that case, I resign.’

‘What!’ I exclaimed before I had a chance to control myself.

‘Sorry, Davo. I have no choice. I’m determined Ninetyminutes is going to be the best site in Europe. If we don’t take on more equity we haven’t a chance of getting there. We’ll just be another also-ran site with a particularly sleazy image.’

‘But one which makes money,’ Tony said.

‘Frankly, I don’t care,’ said Guy.

Tony weighed that up. ‘That, Guy, is your problem,’ he said. ‘But I think you should reconsider.’

‘And I think you should,’ said Guy.

‘I’m in London until Thursday,’ Tony said. ‘I’ll give you until that morning to decide. Now, gentlemen, this meeting is closed.’

Ninetyminutes’ office was on the fourth floor of a converted metalworking shop in a quiet street in Clerkenwell. The Jerusalem Tavern was just over the road. Usually cramped and crowded in the evening, it was cool and empty at that time of the afternoon. Guy got in the beers, a pint of bitter for me, a bottle of Czech beer for him.

‘Bastard,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘He’ll back down,’ I said.

‘No, he won’t.’

‘He’ll have to. He can’t run Ninetyminutes without you.’

‘He’ll figure out how.’

‘There’s got to be a way through this,’ I said. ‘We can come to some kind of compromise.’

‘Maybe,’ said Guy. ‘Just maybe we could this month. But next month it’ll be more of the same. He’ll come up with ideas for how Ninetyminutes should be run that he knows I won’t like. He’ll dangle them there in front of me for a while, and then he’ll force them through. To show who’s smarter. Who’s the better businessman. Who has the power.’ He took a drink of his beer. ‘Did you ever play snakes and ladders with your father?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’

‘Who won?’

‘I can’t remember. I think I did. Perhaps he did. I don’t know.’

‘I played snakes and ladders with my father a lot and he always won. That made me really angry when I was four. And even angrier when I got older and realized that snakes and ladders is a game of chance. The only way you can win every time is by cheating. Pretty sad when a father has to cheat to beat his four-year-old son.’ Guy stared at the label on the bottle in front of him, as if an answer was written there. ‘I knew it was wrong to take his money.’

‘We had no choice.’

Guy sighed. ‘I suppose not.’

He was slumped over his beer, his eyes gloomy, almost desperate, the vitality that had been his constant companion over the previous few months nowhere to be seen. An aura of pessimism emanated from him, dragging down my own spirits. The change frightened me.

We had gone through a lot over the last few months, Guy and I. We had worked long hours, evenings, nights, weekends. We had achieved so much. Getting the site on-line in such a short space of time had been a miracle. Scrabbling together the funding. Recruiting a team of totally committed individuals. I had had a lot of fun. And I had learned a lot about myself and about Guy during that time. I didn’t want it to end.

‘We have to fight him, Guy. We’ve worked too hard for too long for it all to finish like this. What about all your plans for covering the major European leagues? What about the e-commerce? What about the ten million quid Orchestra Ventures have put on the table? Yesterday you were more fired up about this than anyone.’

‘I know. Yesterday I was acting as if Ninetyminutes was my company. I was ignoring my father, ignoring the meeting today, pretending they didn’t exist. But I was deluding myself. They do exist. I can’t hide from the reality.’

‘We’ve faced obstacles like this before and you’ve never quit. You’ve always found a way over them or under them or through them. If it was just me, I’d have given up long ago, you know that.’

Guy smiled.

‘I’ve learned a lot from you,’ I went on. ‘I’ve learned to believe in you. Don’t tell me I was wrong.’

Guy shrugged. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Is it because it’s your father? If it was anyone else you wouldn’t just roll over.’

‘I’m not just rolling over!’ Guy snapped. Then he got a grip of himself. ‘No, you’re right. It is because it’s my father. I know him. He’s determined to turn Ninetyminutes into my failure and his success. And he has all the cards. As usual.’

‘Don’t give up.’

‘I’m sorry, Davo. I already have.’

I looked at him. He meant it.

We sat in silence. I could feel the edifice that we had all worked so hard to create over the last few months crumbling around me, as though Tony Jourdan had removed a vital keystone that kept the whole thing up. It was so bloody unfair!

‘We have to tell them back there,’ I said.

‘You do it. I can’t face them. Go on ahead. I’ll stay here.’

So I left him, shrouded in his own darkness.

2

There was no sign of Guy in the office the next day, Tuesday. I called his flat in Wapping with no reply. My contact at Orchestra Ventures rang me three times but each time I avoided talking to him.

I was drumming my fingers on my desk, wondering what to do next, when Ingrid joined me. Ingrid Da Cunha had known Guy almost as long as I had, but she had been with Ninetyminutes for only two months. She had joined as publisher of the website, and she had been the final ingredient that had made the team work together. I liked her. And I respected her opinion.

‘So, we’re going into the glamour business, are we?’ she said.

‘You are. Not me.’

‘You should stick around. Chartered Accountant of the Month. Mr October. We could really use you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Of course, with my ancestry this should be the perfect job for me. Copacabana babe. Swedish au pair. I could do it all.’

I couldn’t help smiling. Ingrid had big pale-blue eyes, a wide friendly smile and thick chestnut-brown hair. But I had seen her in a bathing suit, and although she didn’t look bad, she was hardly page-three material.

She caught me. ‘What are you laughing at? Sure, my bum’s too big. And my thighs. But I could get cosmetic surgery on the company now. It’s just a question of moving things around a bit. Tony will pay for it. I’m sure my father could fix me up with a surgeon in Rio. You wouldn’t recognize me.’

‘What about growth hormones?’

‘What do you mean? I’m five foot two. Five foot five in the right pair of shoes.’ She punched me on the arm.

‘Ow!’ When Ingrid hit, she hit hard. ‘Don’t get too excited. I think all Ninetyminutes will be doing is providing the links to some seedy little studio in Los Angeles. You’ll have to keep focusing your talents on the football.’

‘Arbroath nil, Hamilton Academicals nil,’ Ingrid said, in an appalling imitation of the results announcer on Grandstand. Ingrid had an accent like none I had ever heard before, although she probably spoke like every other woman in the world with a Swedish mother, a Brazilian father and a British education. Her tone became serious. ‘I just wanted to say that you don’t deserve this.’

‘None of us do.’

‘Tony isn’t going to give in, is he?’

‘I don’t know. I doubt it somehow. But it has to be right to try to get him to change his mind. We can’t give up without a fight.’

‘No, we can’t. But if it does all fall apart, you should be proud of what you’ve achieved. Guy would never have got this far without you. He has his own problems with his father to sort out. You were caught in the middle. It wasn’t your fault.’

She was right. I knew she was right. And it was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.

‘I’ve been talking to the others,’ she said, ‘and nobody wants to hang around here if you and Guy leave.’

‘There’s no need for that. You’ve all put money in. If you stick around you’ll still be able to make something of the site.’

‘But if we leave, Tony’s screwed, isn’t he?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Think about it. No technical support, no writers, just a bunch of computers, some crappy old desks and a website that will be out of date within a week.’

I thought about it. She had a point.

I looked around me at the bodies beavering away. ‘Will they really do that?’

Ingrid nodded. ‘Yep. I think we should tell Tony, don’t you?’

I smiled. Tony was a stubborn bastard, but it was worth a try. Well worth a try. I picked up the phone and called him at his flat in Knightsbridge to ask for a meeting. He was quite businesslike. He agreed to see Ingrid and me at nine o’clock the following evening.

Owen Jourdan strolled in at about midday, clutching a big cup of coffee. I was surprised to see him: if his brother had gone AWOL then I thought he would have too. Owen and Guy had an odd relationship that I had learned to understand over the years. In the normal course of things they hardly spoke to each other, but if one of them got into trouble the other was there for him. Always.

Owen stalked over to his computer and turned it on, ignoring everyone around him as usual. I went over to his desk, pulled up a chair and sat down. He didn’t say anything, but stared at his computer screen powering up, and sipped his coffee.

Although Owen was Guy’s younger brother, he looked nothing like him. It was as though some freak hormonal imbalance had stimulated the growth of some parts of his body while ignoring others. He was well over six feet tall and must have weighed close to seventeen stone. He was bulky without being fat, with an oversized head that gave the impression of immense stupidity. His tiny eyes were deeply set beneath full eyebrows. His mop of short white-dyed hair was uncombed and he looked as if he had just crawled out of bed. He was wearing what he always wore, long shorts and a ninetyminutes.com baseball cap. It was September and the weather was getting cooler. Owen would soon have to get himself a new pair of trousers.

‘How’s Guy?’ I asked.

‘Pissed,’ he answered.

‘By pissed, do you mean pissed off, or pissed drunk?’

‘Probably both.’ His voice was high, almost squeaky. Guy and Owen’s mother was American and they had both spent a fair bit of time living there, but Owen’s accent was much more pronounced than his brother’s.

‘And how are you?’

‘Me?’ For the first time Owen turned towards me, his tiny eyes showing a sudden interest in my face. ‘What do you care about me?’

‘He’s your brother. You’ve worked as hard as any of us in starting this company. It’s your father who’s shutting it down.’

Owen turned away from me, and began tapping passwords into his computer. He ignored me for a whole minute before he finally spoke. ‘I guess I’m pretty pissed too.’

‘Guy seems to have given up,’ I said. ‘But the others haven’t. Ingrid says they’re all willing to resign with him. Your father will have to back down, won’t he?’

Owen didn’t answer, but tapped away.

‘Won’t he?’ I repeated in exasperation.

‘Dad won’t give up,’ said Owen.

‘But why not? You’re his sons. This is his chance to support both of you.’

‘Because he’s a total asshole,’ said Owen. His high-pitched voice contrasted strangely with his size and the words he was saying. ‘He doesn’t give a shit about either of us. Never has. Never will.’

He must have seen my surprise at the sudden vehemence of the response. ‘I used to worship him. So did Guy. Then he walked out on us. Left us with that bitch of a mother. Never saw us, never asked for us. When we did go to stay with him in France he still ignored us. Especially me. And when I saw that slut he left us for, I couldn’t believe it. You know she was a slut,’ he said.

I could feel myself going red.

Owen noticed and smiled to himself. ‘After all that screwing around in France I knew he was a total waste of space. It’s taken Guy a bit longer to figure that out. You know, I think Dad’s scared of him?’

‘Scared of Guy? That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘It does to Dad. Guy represents everything he used to think he was good at. Chasing women, making money. Dad needs to prove to himself he can still do all that. That’s why he screws women half his age. That’s why he’s screwing Ninetyminutes now.’

‘But he’s made much more money than Guy.’

‘He did when he was young, yes. But that was a long time ago. I know for a fact he’s made some bad investments these last few years. It’s not surprising — he doesn’t concentrate on them. But it, like, bugs him. I can tell it bugs him. Now he wants to prove he hasn’t lost his touch.’ Owen’s eyes glowed with a black fire deep beneath his brows. ‘He’s a selfish pig, my dad. He hates us. Both of us. So I’m not at all surprised he wants to destroy Ninetyminutes.’

The strength of all this bitterness took me aback. ‘Where’s Guy?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Owen. He had shared a flat with Guy in Wapping, but once Ninetyminutes had established itself he had moved out and found himself his own place somewhere in Camden.

‘Will he be coming in today?’

‘No idea.’

‘Do you think he’ll change his mind?’

‘No point. I told you. Now, I got a line of code here I need to fix.’

I left Owen to it, reflecting that I had had just about my longest conversation ever with him. And it hadn’t changed my opinion of him one jot.

He was strange. Very strange.

There was no sign of Guy on Wednesday, either, and I didn’t even try to ask Owen about him. Ingrid and I worked till half past eight in the evening, and took the tube to Knightsbridge. She was more confident than I, bristling with arguments and justifications to win Tony over before the next morning’s deadline. I was going to try, but I was much more sceptical of our chances of success. Funnily enough it wasn’t Guy’s defeatism that worried me most, it was the unalloyed certainty of Owen’s hatred for his father. This was not a family about to forgive and forget.

Clutching an A to Z, I led Ingrid through a maze of small streets just to the north of Harrods to where Tony’s flat should be. I paused under a streetlamp to check the map. I was pretty sure I was in the right place, a narrow one-way mews. I looked around for a street sign. A century ago the houses had been inhabited by horses. Now they were inhabited by humans who probably paid at least a million quid for the privilege.

I saw the sign obscured by a car on the other side of the street. I moved a couple of yards down the road to get a better view. I was in the right place. There was a man in the car who caught my eye for a second and then looked away. I wondered briefly what he was doing sitting in a car in the dark. Waiting for someone, presumably. Then I looked for Tony’s flat, which turned out to be the top floor of one of the mews houses.

We rang the bell. Tony answered.

‘Ah, the deputation,’ he said. ‘Come in. I’m afraid you can’t stay long; I’m meeting some friends for dinner in half an hour.’

We sat on pale leather armchairs in his expensively decorated living room. There was no sign of anyone else in the flat. I suppose I had secretly hoped that I would find Guy there negotiating an arrangement with his father.

Ingrid came straight to the point. ‘We’ve come to ask you to keep Guy on.’

Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, I can try to persuade Guy to stay, but it’s his decision. There’s really nothing I can do about it.’

‘Oh, come on, Tony,’ I said. ‘We all know why Guy is resigning. You won’t let us raise more money to fund Ninetyminutes’ expansion. I was there. I saw it.’

Tony held up his hands. ‘There’s no point in discussing this now. Let’s see what happens tomorrow morning, shall we? We can talk about it then.’

‘No,’ said Ingrid. ‘We talk about it now. You see, if Guy resigns the rest of the team will resign also.’

‘That’s up to you,’ said Tony calmly.

‘But if we all leave, how are you going to run the site?’

‘I’ll hire people.’

‘That won’t work,’ Ingrid pointed out. ‘You need people who are up to speed with the content, the design, the site software. You can’t just get bodies off the street to do it.’

‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’

‘No,’ said Ingrid. ‘I’m just trying to explain what will happen to your two-million-pound investment if Guy resigns tomorrow.’

‘You are trying to blackmail me,’ said Tony, a patronizing smile playing on his lips. Then his expression changed: all traces of humour disappeared as he leaned forward, deadly serious now. He spoke with a low measured urgency that commanded our total attention. ‘Let me tell you something. I don’t respond to threats. No one in my entire working career has threatened me and got away with it. Whatever happens, Ingrid, you won’t have a job tomorrow. Neither will you, David. Now, it’s time for you both to leave.’

I could see Ingrid was furious, but I caught her eye, and we got up to go.

‘Creep,’ muttered Ingrid as we strode down the mews towards Knightsbridge and taxis.

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘It was worth a try.’

‘Guy was right,’ she said. ‘We never should have taken his money.’

‘No, we shouldn’t. Big mistake.’

My mistake.

We passed the man in the car at the end of the street. He looked as if he had fallen asleep. With a jerk, he seemed suddenly to wake up and start his car. As we turned the corner, I looked over my shoulder and saw Tony coming out of his mews house.

‘I never liked that man,’ said Ingrid. ‘Ever since we stayed with him in France, I knew he was a scumbag. He gives me the creeps every time I look at him. He thinks he’s a super-suave playboy, but he’s just a dirty old man. He always was. Do you know what I’d like to do to him?’

I never found out what Ingrid would like to do to Tony. Instead I heard the roar of an engine from the mews, and a cry, abruptly cut short.

I glanced at Ingrid and ran.

I rounded the corner and saw a body splayed out at an unnatural angle on the pavement just in front of Tony’s house. As I came closer, it was obvious who it was. I recognized the clothes. I recognized the shape and size. But when I reached him, I couldn’t recognize his face. His head was a bloody mess.

A second later, Ingrid arrived at my shoulder. She looked down at the body on the pavement and screamed.

Ninetyminutes had lost its chairman.