Unnatural Justice

Nine.

I needn't have worried. Susie had known all along what would happen to Joe's shareholding in the event of his death. I'd thought I'd been clever in tracking Mr. Maltbie to his lair, but unlike me, my wife is a very good and conscientious director of a public company, and she had a metaphorical finger on the pulse of every one of its members.

"Can you do anything about it?" I asked her that evening, after I had given her a run-down on my day, as we sat beside the pool enjoying a nice chilled bottle of Sancerre.

"No. Not a damn thing."

"You're not bothered?"

"Of course I'm bloody bothered! I don't want to be connected with him in any way. I wish with all my heart that it was him in that box in the undertaker's and not Joe. But sadly it isn't. He's still drawing breath and, no doubt, ordering his guards about each and every day, as if he was still the big cheese. Happily, that's one thing he'll never be able to do to me again. I may have to have him back as a shareholder, but his influence will never reach into my office, or into our boardroom."

"How would you feel if I contacted his trustees in lunacy, or whatever the hell they're called, and offered to buy the shares? Just so you can be rid of him for good."

Susie smiled at me. "Curator bonis," she said.

"What's that? An ice-cream or something?"

"A Curator bonis is a person appointed by the court to look after the affairs of someone who's mentally handicapped. You're a love, Oz, but I couldn't let you do that. Have you any idea what Joe's shares are worth?"

"About four million. Do you know what I'm going to earn this year, given the deals that Roscoe's done for me?"

She reached across and squeezed my hand. "You're a love, you really are. Listen, I know you've been buying shares on the quiet, but that's too big a chunk."

I shrugged. "At the current price it would be a good investment. I might just do it anyway. The way I understand it, now the shares have reverted back to Jack, you don't have a veto over their sale."

"That's true, I don't. But there are other reasons why you shouldn't do it. For a start, you need a willing seller to do a deal. I don't know who the Curator bonis is… although I'm bound to find out when Joe's estate is processed and the transfer is notified to the company's registrar… but given the value of the property he's looking after, he's probably a big-firm accountant or a heavy duty corporate lawyer.

Whatever, he isn't going to be a mug, and if he's doing his job properly, he'll view those shares as a good long-term investment. If he sells them at all, it'll be at a premium. You'll have to pay over the odds, and if you do that…" She took a sip of her wine and gave me a knowing look. When Susie's business brain moves into overdrive, I struggle to keep up with her, but I always do my best.

"You and I are husband and wife; effectively what's mine is yours and vice versa. I own sixty per cent of the business as it is, through the trust; if you do this deal it'll take our family holding to damn near seventy per cent. On top of that, if you buy at the price Jack's Curator's likely to settle for, word will get around. What if the other shareholders, who are mainly institutional, get wind and come to us wanting the same price for theirs. We'd be in a pickle."

"Couldn't the group buy them in?"

She snorted. "Sure, and fuck up its cash position. We'd be back where we started, a family-owned business at the mercy of those fickle bastards who are decision-makers in the banks, who are in turn at the mercy of their institutional shareholders. No, Oz my darling boy; noble as your motives may be, I'm not going to let you compromise us."

"What are you going to do, then?"

"Nothing. When the transfer takes effect I'll sit tight and see what the Curator does. My guess is he'll do nothing at all."

"What if he offers you the shares?"

"Why the hell should he do that?"

"Does Jack know that you know he's not your real father?"

She seemed to jump in her chair, then settled back into its thick cushions, her brow suddenly furrowed by a frown. "I don't know," she murmured. "But unless Joe told him, I can't imagine how he would. You know I haven't seen him or spoken to him since he went away, but I can't say for sure that Joe didn't keep in touch with him. They were friends from way back, after all."

"Has Jack ever tried to contact you?"

"Only the once, after he was committed to the State Hospital. I had a letter from him."

"You never told me that."

"You never asked me till now. But that's not surprising. Let's face it, Oz; if one of us has a reason to hate Jack Gantry it's you, rather than me. I found out everything he did, from Mike, and I know that Jan's death wasn't an accident."

I looked away from her, across the pool, as I replayed in my mind's eye my last meeting with the maniacal Lord Provost, when he had justified himself to the last. I had wanted to kill him then, and if my friends hadn't been there to prevent me I might have done just that. I had never spoken of that night to Susie, and even if Mike Dylan had when he was around, I still didn't want to.

"So what did you do with the Lord Provost's letter?" I didn't ask her what it had contained.

"I sent it back to him, via the State Hospital superintendent, and told him that I wanted no further contact with him, of any sort. The superintendent replied; he said that he understood, and that he would take care of it for me. So far he's been as good as his word."

"Long may it stay that way," I said, a touch grimly, 'and long may the old bastard stay out there in Carstairs, enjoying his drug-infested porridge."

I resolved to think no more of Jack Gantry, and to forget any notion of bidding for his shares in the group that still bore his name. Instead, I settled into my chair, smiled at my wife, and thought of my own Dad.

I was due to give Mac the Dentist a phone call. I had still to tell him about Joe: I had put off doing that until I could give him the whole package, funeral arrangements and everything.

There was something else I probably had to tell him too. She had not been at the forefront of my thoughts since the bombshell in Mother well had exploded, but Andrea Neiporte was still there. I had wondered whether to spill the beans to Mac or not, but I was coming down on the side of "Yes'. If she was capable of tossing a can of paint at me, she was probably still capable of making trouble for him.

Jay had reported to me, that evening and the night before, that there had been no sightings of her on the video cameras at the entrance to the estate, or anywhere else for that matter. That was good; my guess was that the thing at the premiere had been her way of getting back at me for roughing up her old man. Still, I couldn't be certain, so Mac had to be told.

Susie, on the other hand, had not; she had written the incident off as a nutter at work, and there was no sense in making her any the wiser.

I decided to speak to my Dad as soon as Susie left for work next morning. That was first on my list. But what further action to take against the Neiportes ran it a close second.