Crime Writers and Other Animals (27 page)

‘I like risks.' Then I added, ‘In all areas of my life.'

She didn't give me anything so rude as a wink, but I could see she'd salted the message away. There was now a kind of private bond between us, something that excluded Roland.

I moved briskly on. ‘So what size of investment are you looking for at the moment?'

‘Over the next year I need a quarter of a million,' she replied coolly. ‘Immediately a hundred thousand. Roland's supplying most of that, so I'm just looking for top-up funds at the moment.'

‘Top-up to the tune of how much?'

‘Ten grand.'

‘What, Roland, you're already committed for the ninety?'

He nodded. ‘Seeing the return I got on fifty, can you blame me?'

‘No.' I was silent for a moment. ‘Pity I came in so late on the deal, isn't it?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, ten grand's not much of a stake for a real
risk-taker
, is it?' As I said the word, I fixed Felicia with my eye. She gave an almost imperceptible acknowledgement of the secret between us.

‘There'll be more opportunities,' she said soothingly. ‘Better for you to start small. See how it goes. I mean, the next six months may not go as well as the first. I don't want you to be out of pocket.'

‘Not much danger of that, is there?'

She shook her head firmly and, with a little smile, said, ‘No.'

‘So are you going in for the ten grand, Nicky?' asked Roland.

‘You try and stop me.' I took a sip of wine. ‘You sure I can't go in for more, Felicia?'

‘Absolutely positive.'

‘But look, if you're after a quarter of a million over the next year, surely I could—'

The blue eyes turned to steel. ‘Mr Foulkes, I am offering you a stake of ten thousand pounds in my business. That is the offer. Ten grand – no more. Take it or leave it.'

Felicia Rushworth was quite daunting in that mode. I left it there for the rest of the lunch. But I was a bit miffed. She'd opened up this glowing prospect to me, and then severely limited my access to it. Ten grand's nothing to an entrepreneur like me. I knew this was a really good thing, and I wanted to be into it a lot deeper than that.

Still, we didn't talk about it further, just enjoyed Nico Ladenis's cooking. Bloody good. Makes you realize just how bad the garbage is you get dished up at places like Blake's. We got through a couple of rather decent bottles of Pouilly Fumé too.

Which inevitably led to Roland and me needing an excursion to the Gents. It was there that I moved on to the next stage of the plan I'd been forming during the lunch.

‘Any chance of my getting in for more, do you reckon?' I asked casually.

‘Mm?' Roland was preoccupied with his zip.

‘More than ten grand . . . in Felicia's little scheme . . . I mean, ten grand's nothing . . . I want to be a serious player.'

Roland grimaced. ‘Hm . . . Felicia's a strong-willed lady. She says she'll let you in for ten grand, that's what she means. Probably just protecting herself. I mean, she doesn't know much about you – only what I've told her. I know you're the genuine article, but you can't blame her for being cautious. There're a lot of villains about, you know.'

‘You don't need to tell me that. Do you think it's worth my having another go – asking Felicia straight out if I can invest more?'

He jutted out a dubious lower lip. ‘Like I say, when she's decided something . . .' He turned thoughtfully to wash his hands in the basin. ‘Tell you what,' he said after a moment, ‘. . . I could cut you in on a bit of mine.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, so long as I give Felicia the ninety grand, she's not going to know where it comes from. If you give me another ten, your stake goes up to twenty, doesn't it?'

‘Yes, but that's cutting down your profits, isn't it?'

Roland Puissant shrugged. ‘I did all right first time round. Got a few other good things I could divert the spare into.'

‘What are they?'

‘Hm?' He shook the water off his hands and reached for a towel.

‘The other good things?'

He grinned at me and shook his head. ‘Have to keep some secrets, you know, Nicky.'

‘OK. Point taken.' I straightened my old Etonian tie in the mirror. ‘You wouldn't consider letting me in for more than another ten . . .?'

We haggled a bit, but basically I got what I was after. I'd pay ten grand to Felicia and forty to Roland. She'd get the promised ninety from him, and not know that I'd contributed nearly half of it. Then Roland would account the profits back to me.

I felt pretty pleased with my day's work. Though I say it myself, I'm a bloody good negotiator. And I had achieved a fifty-grand stake in one of the most lucrative little projects I'd ever heard of: lunch for three at Nico at Ninety was a small price to pay.

Struck me as I was walking down Park Lane from the restaurant that in fact I was almost going into the family business. The Foulkes fortune had been built up by ferrying Africans across the Atlantic. What I was now involved in was ferrying them back the other way. Rather neat, I thought.

‘I just feel so dreadful about this.'

Roland Puissant looked pretty dreadful too. We were at dell'Ugo, noisy as ever but smashing nosh. ‘Tell me about it,' I said.

‘I'm almost embarrassed to.'

‘Come on, you don't have to be embarrassed with me. I'm unembarrassable. Anyway, I'm a mate, aren't I? Not to mention a business partner. You, me and Felicia, eh?'

‘That's it. Felicia,' he said glumly.

‘Come on, me old kipper. Pour it all out.'

And he did. It was bad.

Basically we'd been had. Felicia Rushworth had calmly taken our money and gone off to Jamaica with it. Whether there actually was any employment agency business seemed doubtful. Whether there was some useful contact at the Home Office who could fix work permits for Caribbean visitors seemed even more doubtful. Roland and I had fallen for the oldest ploy in the book – a pretty girl with a convincing line of patter.

‘And I just feel so guilty towards you,' Roland concluded. ‘I should never have mentioned the project to you.'

‘Oh, now come on. I have to take my share of the blame too. You never volunteered anything. You never wanted to talk about it. Every detail I got out of you was like drawing a tooth.'

‘Yes, but I shouldn't have got you involved. Or I should have seen to it that your stake stayed at ten grand.'

‘Well, you didn't. You were bloody generous to me about that, Roland. At the time you were taking a considerable potential loss just to give me a chance.'

‘A chance I bet you wish now you hadn't taken.'

‘Look, it's done. I did it. Maybe I was bloody stupid but I did it. If you take risks, some of them are going to pay off and some aren't. Anyway we're in the same boat – both of us fifty grand to the bad . . .' My words trailed off at the sight of his face. ‘You mean more than fifty . . .?'

Roland Puissant nodded wretchedly. ‘Practically cleaned me out, I'm afraid.'

‘But I thought you said you'd got a lot of other good things going?'

‘Yes, I did. Trouble is, all of those were recommended by Felicia. She generously took care of those investments too.'

‘Oh. So she's walked off with the whole caboodle?'

‘About one point two million in all,' he confessed.

I whistled. ‘Bloody hell. That is a lot.'

‘Yes. God, I'm stupid. I suppose . . . someone who looks like that . . . someone who's as intelligent as that . . . it just never occurs to you that they'd . . . I was putty in her hands. Is there anything more ridiculous than a man of my age playing the fool because of a pretty face? Some of us just never learn, eh?'

I didn't tell him how closely I identified with what he was saying. Instead, I moved the conversation on. ‘Question is . . . what're we going to do about it?'

‘Bloody well get revenge!' Roland spat the words out. I'd never seen him so angry.

‘How?'

‘I don't know.' He shook his head hopelessly. ‘No idea. Mind you, if I was out in Jamaica, I could do something . . .'

‘Like what?'

‘I know people out there. People who could put pressure on Felicia. Reckon they could persuade her to return our money.'

‘Are you talking about criminals?'

He shrugged. ‘Often hard to say where legitimate business practice stops and criminality starts, wouldn't you say? But yes, this lot's means of persuasion are perhaps more direct than traditional negotiations.'

‘Would she get hurt?' The words came out instinctively. Whatever Felicia might have done to us, the idea of injury to that fragile beauty was appalling.

‘She's a shrewd cookie. I think she'd assess the options and come across with the goods before they started hurting her.'

‘So you think we'd get the money back?'

‘Oh yes. I mean, obviously we'd have to pay something for the . . . er, hired help . . . so we wouldn't get everything back . . . but we wouldn't be that much out of pocket.'

‘Well, then, for God's sake, let's do it.'

Roland Puissant gave me a lacklustre look. ‘Yeah, great. How? I told you, she's cleaned me out.'

‘Couldn't I go to Jamaica and organize it?'

‘Wish you could.' He shook his head slowly. ‘Unfortunately, the people whose help we need are a bit wary of strangers. They know me, they've dealt with me before. But the last unfamiliar bloke who tried to make contact with them . . . ended up with his throat cut.'

‘Ah.'

‘No, I'm sorry. It'd have to be me or no one. But . . .' He spread his hands despairingly wide. ‘. . . I don't currently have the means to fly to Jamaica – let alone bribe the local villains. At the moment I'd be pushed to raise the bus fare to Piccadilly Circus.'

‘Well, look, let me sub you, Roland.'

‘Now don't be ridiculous, Nicky. You're already down fifty grand. I absolutely refuse to let you lose any more.'

‘Look, it's an investment for me. It's my only chance of getting my fifty grand back.'

He still looked dubious. ‘I don't like the idea of you . . .'

‘Roland', I said, ‘I insist.'

It was nearly a month later when Roland next rang me. He was calling from Heathrow. ‘I wanted to get through to you as soon as possible. I've had one hell of a time over in Jamaica, I'm afraid.'

‘Any success?'

‘Not immediately, no. I was just beginning to get somewhere, but then the money ran out and—'

‘You got through the whole ten grand I subbed you?'

‘Yes. As I said, the kind of help I was enlisting doesn't come cheap.'

‘But why didn't they come up with the goods? I thought you said they'd just put the frighteners on Felicia and she'd stump up the cash.'

‘That's how it should have worked, yes. But she was a step ahead of us.'

‘In what way?'

‘She'd hired some muscle of her own. I'm afraid what I got into was like full-scale gang warfare. Bloody nasty at times, let me tell you. This time last week I didn't reckon I'd ever see Heathrow again.'

‘Really? What, you mean your life was at—'

‘You don't want to hear all this, Nicky. It's not very interesting. Main point is, I've let you down. I said I'd go over there and get your money back and I haven't. And I've spent your extra ten grand. In fact, you're now sixty grand down, thanks to me.'

‘Listen, Roland, I walked into it quite knowingly. If you want to blame anyone, blame me. Blame my judgement.'

‘That's very sporting of you to put it like that, but I can't buy it, I'm afraid. You're out of pocket and it's my fault. But don't worry, I'll see you get your money back.'

‘How? You've lost one point two million.'

‘I know, but there's stuff I can do. There's something I'm trying to set up right now, actually. And if that doesn't work out, I'll take another mortgage on the house. Anything to stop this awful guilt. I can't stand going round with the permanent feeling that I've let an old chum down.'

‘Roland, you're getting things out of proportion. I won't hear of you mortgaging your house just for my sake. We can sort this thing out. Best thing you can do is get a good night's sleep and we'll meet up in the morning. See where we stand then, eh?'

‘Well, if you . . .'

‘I insist.'

‘Where're we going to meet?'

‘Roland, you don't by any chance play Real Tennis, do you?'

Don't know if you know the Harbour Club. Chelsea, right on the river. Converted old power station, actually, but they've done it bloody well. Very high spec. Pricey, of course, but then you have to pay for class. And the clientele is, it has to be said, pretty damn classy.

Anyway, I try to play Real Tennis down there at least once a week. Enjoy the game, and it stops the body seizing up totally. Good way of sweating out a hangover too, so I tend to go for a morning court.

I thought it'd be just the thing to sort out old Roland. He'd sounded frankly a bit stressed on the phone, but I reckoned a quick canter round the court might be just the thing to sort him out. I was glad to hear he knew the game – not many people do – but surprised when he said he'd played it for the school. I didn't know Harrow had a Real Tennis court. Still, Roland was at the place and I wasn't, so I guess he knew what he was talking about.

I said we should play the game first, to kind of flush out the old system, and then talk over a drink. Roland wasn't so keen on this – his guilt hadn't gone away and he wanted to get straight down to the schemes he had for replacing my money – but I insisted and won the day. I can be quite forceful when I need to be.