Fatal Error (29 page)

He led me into a small office with two desks, two computers and lots of filing cabinets. Both desks were empty. His partner was out on the streets. There was a funny smell in the place. Damp or drains or both.

‘Take a seat, Mr Lane,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’ He spoke rapidly in a clipped Irish accent.

‘We’ve met before,’ I said, sitting down. ‘Or, if we didn’t actually meet, we saw each other.’

Donnelly nodded, and smiled a thin smile. In doing so he displayed protruding front teeth with a clear gap between
them. I wished I’d seen them when I was describing him to Sergeant Spedding.

‘I saw you waiting in a car the night Tony Jourdan died,’ I began.

‘I know.’

‘I was wondering if you could tell me what happened. What you saw.’

‘I told the police.’

‘I know. Now perhaps you would tell me.’

Another smile. Those teeth again. ‘Doing a little detective work, are you, Mr Lane?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Now, why would it be in my interest to help you?’

I had anticipated his question. I pulled out five twenties. ‘I believe you make your living by providing information for a fee. There’s the fee.’

Donnelly glanced at me. I had no idea what the right amount to offer him was. He could see that. He could also see that I was keen to get the information.

‘That’s quite true,’ he said. ‘But I charge more than that.’

‘How much?’

‘Two-fifty. Including VAT.’

I counted out another five notes. ‘Two hundred. That’s all.’

Donnelly pocketed the notes.

‘What do you want to know? I warn you I can’t divulge any private information relating to my client. That would be unethical.’

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘Just tell me what you saw that evening.’

Donnelly took a well-worn notebook out of a desk drawer and thumbed through it until he found the right day. The smell seemed to me to be getting worse. I glanced at the window. Shut.

Donnelly noticed. ‘Got to keep it closed, I’m afraid. Street noise is pretty bad here. Can’t hear yourself think.’ He smoothed open the pages. ‘This is it. I had been following Jourdan on and off for two days, since he arrived at Heathrow on Sunday morning.’

‘Did you see him with a woman?’

‘That’s confidential to my client.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. I didn’t think it was important.

‘At eight fifty-eight I saw you and Ms Da Cunha enter Jourdan’s flat. At nine twenty-one you left. A couple of minutes later, Jourdan left the flat as well. He started walking south, towards Old Brompton Road. This was a bit of a problem for me because of the one-way system round there.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It means that I couldn’t follow him by car if he walked south. The one-way pattern is north. So I had to drive north, go around the block and pick him up as he came out on to Old Brompton Road looking for a cab. I’d already done that a few times before, so I thought it would work this time.’

‘But it didn’t.’

‘It didn’t. I went around the block and waited on the main road. No sign of him. Then I heard the sirens. I drove back towards his street and as soon as I saw it was filled with police cars I drove on.’

‘Why didn’t you stop and talk to them?’

Donnelly smiled. ‘Usually my clients don’t like me to do that sort of thing. I find things work more smoothly if I avoid the police. Although in this case that was a mistake. My client told them all about me. They weren’t impressed with my discretion.’

‘I imagine not. So you told them what you saw?’

‘I didn’t see anything. Apart from you.’

‘You must have!’

‘I didn’t. It’s true someone else must have been parked on
that street watching Jourdan’s flat, but I didn’t see them. It was dark, I couldn’t tell whether any of the parked cars were occupied or not. It looks as though the second I’d driven out of sight round the corner, the other car started up and ran Jourdan down.’

‘Is that what the police think?’ I asked.

‘It is now. For a while they seemed to think I’d squashed him. They took my car apart, took me apart. But they didn’t find anything.’

‘So they let you go?’

‘Yes. They know I didn’t do it. Mrs Jourdan had picked me at random through the Yellow Pages. They know I’m not a professional hit man. I mean, look at this dump. I tell you, if I were a pro I’d be able to afford a better place than this. Also running someone down is about as hit and miss as you can get. A shot is much cleaner and quicker. They know I didn’t do it.’

And so should you, he didn’t need to add.

As I studied the weasel of a man in front of me, I couldn’t help but agree. He didn’t look like my idea of an underworld thug.

‘Have you ever met Guy Jourdan, Tony’s son?’

‘No. I did catch sight of him when I followed Jourdan to your offices in Clerkenwell. But I’ve never spoken to him.’

‘Do you have any theories as to who did kill Tony Jourdan?’

‘I’m sure I could find some if you retained me.’

‘No chance of that.’

‘No? Well I’ll give you my opinion for free. This was no professional hit. It was personal. Personal usually means family. And not my client. I’ve seen jealous wives before and frankly they come a hell of a lot more jealous than Mrs Jourdan.’

‘The sons, then?’

Donnelly shrugged. ‘My fees are thirty-five pounds an hour plus expenses. I could find out for you.’

‘No thank you, Mr Donnelly. And thanks for the information.’

‘Thirty? And there wouldn’t be much in the way of expenses.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Donnelly.’ It was a relief to get out on to the pavement and taste the fresh Hammersmith air.

Guy grabbed me as soon as I got back to the office.

‘There you are, Davo. I’ve been looking all over for you. You’ve got your mobile switched off.’

‘Have I? Sorry.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Howles Marriott. With Mel,’ I said too quickly.

Guy looked at me sharply. ‘No you weren’t. I phoned her there half an hour ago.’

I didn’t tell him where I had been. And beyond looking at me strangely, he didn’t ask. We trusted each other not to skive off. Which made me feel guilty: I had abused that trust.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I want to go over the stuff I was planning to talk to Westbourne about. I won’t be able to see them tomorrow, you’ll have to do it.’

I pushed my conversation with Donnelly out of my mind and focused on Ninetyminutes.

Things were coming together. Ninetyminutes now had a profile as one of the up-and-coming internet companies everyone had heard of. This was partly to do with the efforts of our PR firm and partly to do with Tony’s death, which had provided an unlooked for and unwanted hook for the press. But it was mostly to do with Guy. He was excellent with journalists. He had a good story to tell, which he told well. His vision of what the Internet was all about sounded original and made sense. He had an interesting background
and he looked very good in a photograph. The November issue of one of the leading business magazines carried a picture of him on the cover, and inside a write-up of ninetyminutes.com as one of the top-ten internet businesses to watch out for in Europe. As a result of all this we were now better known than many of our longer-established rivals. This wasn’t just good for the ego: it was vital if Ninetyminutes was going to overtake the other soccer sites.

Derek Silverman was a real asset. He knew many of the top club chairmen and, more importantly, he seemed to be well respected by them. Guy and he developed deals with a number of clubs where they would pass on visitors to us who were interested in the football world beyond their official club site, and we would integrate our club zone with theirs. It was difficult to do: the areas of overlap had to be carefully dealt with, but for us it was very powerful. Die-hard club supporters would always look at their own club’s site first. This was a way of capturing at least part of their attention.

More work.

Owen was a problem. Not because of his understanding of the technology. That had worked brilliantly: the architecture of the site had proved totally scalable, as he had insisted it should be. It was his inability to communicate. He insisted on using e-mail. His messages were terse, often insulting and frequently meaningless. As the company grew, this mattered. He angered the consultants we had hired to put in place the e-commerce system so badly that they quit. That set us back three weeks. Guy was furious, Amy apoplectic. But Owen was untouchable. He was Guy’s brother.

We were planning to launch the on-line retailing site at the beginning of December. It was a tight deadline. Too tight. After the fracas with the consultants, Guy agreed to move it back another week, but that was all. We were all
nervous we wouldn’t hit it and Owen wasn’t inspiring us with confidence.

Ingrid, though, was doing a brilliant job. For someone who knew very little about football, she picked it up fast. Not that she ever interfered with Gaz’s views on the substance of what was written. But she was constantly asking herself and anyone who would listen why a visitor would spend time on different parts of the site and what each visitor wanted. She didn’t believe we had a ‘typical’ visitor. Each was different, each wanted different things. Ingrid wanted to provide as much as possible for everyone as seamlessly as possible. We didn’t want to be a niche player, we wanted to be
the
soccer site for everyone. Not easy.

I spent a lot of time with her and I enjoyed it. She was fun to work with. She never became too uptight and in the whirlwind that was everyday life at Ninetyminutes, she was a voice of sanity. Although I knew she took Ninetyminutes desperately seriously, she never showed it, and she was always ready with a joke to defuse tense situations. We all trusted her to have the right answer to difficult problems and she nearly always did.

I found my relationship with her slowly changing. I began to miss her when she was out of the office. I would go and talk to her about issues that I should have been able to deal with by myself. I would watch her in meetings. And when I was alone at the end of the day, or when I was travelling, I would think about her.

This all crept up on me. When I did finally realize what was happening, it unsettled me. I wasn’t sure what to do about it, if anything.

I had hoped talking to Mel about Guy would clarify things, but it had just made them more opaque. I wasn’t sure what Mel’s real views on Guy and Dominique were. And although I had been firm in my opinion that there was nothing going
on between Guy and Ingrid, Mel’s suspicions had stayed with me. They nagged at me and raised another question I had wanted answered for a long time.

Ingrid and I were sharing a taxi to our ad agency in Soho. Except we weren’t going anywhere. They were digging up High Holborn and the only thing moving was the meter. Ingrid was staring out of the window at the pedestrians overtaking our cab at a stroll. She checked her watch. ‘We should have taken the tube.’

‘Too late now. You said we didn’t have time.’

‘See that man there? The one in the Barbour? I bet you five quid he gets to those next traffic lights before we do.’

‘You’re on.’

Three minutes later I handed her five pounds. The taxi moved forward ten feet.

We were locked together in the back of the cab. The driver’s window was shut. A wall of noise from pneumatic drills seemed to shield us from the street outside.

‘Ingrid?’

‘Yes?’

‘About Mull?’

‘Mull?’ she said in surprise.

‘Yes, Mull.’

She tensed. ‘What about Mull?’

I swallowed. Afraid to ask the question, but knowing I had to ask it some time and now was as good a time as any.

‘Why?’

Ingrid looked at me. ‘You asked me that then. I never answered you, did I?’

‘No.’

‘You deserve an answer.’ She sighed. ‘I could say I was drunk and Guy seduced me. And that would be true. I’m sure that if I’d been sober I’d never have gone into his room.
But I wanted him to seduce me. And I didn’t want to say no.’

‘Why not? Especially given what he’d done to Mel?’

‘I guess I just wanted to see what it was like. I admit it, I was attracted to him. And the fact that I knew nothing would come of it made it more exciting. I could sin for a night and forget it. I’m not proud of it, not proud of it at all. I was stupid. I lost Mel as a friend. And you.’

So now I knew. But knowing made me disappointed in Ingrid. I had assumed she was different, but she was just like all the rest of them, queuing up for Guy’s favours.

‘If it makes any difference,’ Ingrid said, ‘it didn’t go any further. He flew back on his own the next day and I took a ferry to the mainland and a later train to make sure I missed you and Mel. I felt pretty small.’

I looked away from her. But it did make a difference.

It was ten o’clock and I was tired. Time to go home. I was shuffling the papers around on my desk ready for the next day, when I noticed a legal document. Damn! Guy was going to Paris first thing in the morning to finalize discussions with the man we had found to set up an office there. And I had forgotten to give him the contract.

I dialled Guy’s home number. No answer. Tried his mobile. Switched off. Damn, damn, damn. I stuffed the contract into an envelope, grabbed my briefcase and walked up to Clerkenwell Road, where I hailed a cab for Wapping.

The driver dropped me outside Guy’s building with his meter running. I told him I would only be a minute. I followed a woman into the building and took the lift up to the second floor. I rang the bell.

No answer. Bloody hell. What was plan B? Should I wait here, or try to meet him at Heathrow the next morning? Or was he flying from City Airport? I range the bell again.

This time I heard muttering. ‘All right, all right.’ A few seconds later Guy opened the door in his dressing gown. He seemed surprised to see me.

‘Sorry to get you up,’ I said. ‘I forgot to give you the contract when you left this evening. You couldn’t really go to Paris without it, so I took a taxi here. It’s waiting outside.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Guy, with impatience. ‘Give it here.’

I was a little put out at this. I had, after all, taken a taxi significantly out of my way to get the bloody document to him. OK, I should have remembered to give him the contract, but then he should have remembered to ask for it –