Authors: Michael Ridpath
‘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.
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.