Authors: Michael Ridpath
‘What did I tell you? So Torsten’s father said no?’
‘Torsten wouldn’t admit that to Guy, but that’s what Guy thinks. Guy was furious. I thought he was going to jump on a plane to Hamburg and kill him.’
‘Don’t say that,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know. Tony Jourdan has died. I was put in hospital. Henry’s family was threatened. It’s getting dangerous to thwart Ninetyminutes these days.’
Ingrid shuddered. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Guy didn’t jump on a plane, and before you say anything, Owen was in the office all day too.’
‘Did Madden call Silverman?’
‘I think he must have. Silverman came round about lunchtime, and he and Guy shut themselves in the boardroom for a couple of hours.’
‘Did Guy tell you what it was about?’
‘No. I asked him if there was anything I should know. He said there would be a board meeting tomorrow morning. Apparently Clare is in Leeds or somewhere today. He said it was to confirm your removal as a director from the board. But there’s something else, I’m sure.’
‘Madden’s put an offer in.’
‘It looks like it.’
‘I wonder what the board will say.’
Tuesday morning was tough. The waiting was becoming more difficult by the day. I had spent many hours trying to work out who had run Tony Jourdan down, with little success. For all I knew, it could have been Guy. My best chance for a breakthrough was my forthcoming meeting with Anne Glazier, but that was still twenty-four hours away. Ingrid and I had decided to meet for lunch so that she could tell me about the board meeting, but by nine o’clock I was
already stir-crazy. I was just about to leave my flat and go for a walk when the phone rang. It was Michelle.
‘Hi, Michelle. How are you?’
‘I’m good,’ she said. But she sounded tense. It took a lot to make Michelle tense. ‘I’ve got a message from Guy.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. He’d like to see you this morning. Ten o’clock, if you can make it.’
‘OK,’ I said. I was intrigued. And besides, it was good to be able to actually do something. ‘I’ll come round straight away.’
‘He’d like to meet you at Howles Marriott.’
That was a surprise. But I supposed in his current mood Guy wanted to keep me away from Britton Street.
‘All right. I’ll be there.’
Howles Marriott’s offices were in a warren of narrow pavements and cramped squares off Chancery Lane and behind Fleet Street. This was once the labyrinth of streets described by Charles Dickens, but those overcrowded dwellings had been flattened by bombs and bulldozers to be replaced by red brick, plate glass and flagstones. I found such soulless quiet in the middle of London rather eerie.
I waited in the reception area. I had been to these offices dozens of times before, and usually Mel would come down to meet me. Not this time. I was shown up to her office by her secretary.
She was there with Guy. I smiled at her. A mistake.
‘Sit down, please,’ she said, her voice unfamiliarly cold.
I took a seat at her small conference table, on which she and I had strewn papers many times in the past. She sat facing me, next to Guy.
Guy stared at me coolly. He seemed to have aged in the last few days, the lines around his face had deepened. His forehead was creased in a frown of worry. There were bags under his eyes.
It was finally getting to him.
‘Hello, Guy,’ I said.
He didn’t answer. I sat down.
‘We want to speak to you about your role in the unsolicited offer Ninetyminutes has just received from Champion Starsat,’ Mel said.
‘I see.’
‘Do you deny you spoke to them?’ Mel’s voice was dispassionate, lawyerly, precise.
‘No, I don’t,’ I said simply.
Guy snorted. ‘What were you thinking of? You know Champion Starsat are the last people in the world I’d want to sell Ninetyminutes to. We discussed this a couple of months ago. The board voted to tell them to get lost.’
‘I went to them as an independent shareholder.’
‘You’re still a director of the company,’ Mel said. ‘You should have abided by the decision of the board.’
‘But Guy fired me last week.’
‘Technically you remain a director until you are removed by a resolution at a board meeting. We haven’t had the board meeting yet. It’s scheduled for later on this morning.’
‘Whatever. It’s still the only way out for Ninetyminutes. How much have Champion Starsat offered?’
‘Eighteen million pounds,’ Guy said.
Eighteen million. I ran the numbers in my head. At that level we’d all get out whole, Orchestra, me, Guy, Owen, Ingrid, my father. In fact, we’d make a small profit.
‘That’s not bad.’
‘Not bad? It’s bloody awful! Two months ago this business was worth two hundred million. It’s grown since then and now it’s worth a poxy eighteen. I don’t know why I ever hired you as a finance director, Davo. You’re really not very good at sums.’
‘I can do the sums,’ I said. ‘In a couple of weeks’ time
Ninetyminutes will be worth precisely zero. Eighteen million pounds is eighteen million pounds more than that.’
Guy sighed in frustration. ‘You make me sick. I chose you as a partner because I thought you were one person I could rely on. Someone I could trust. I thought you understood the vision. I thought you got it. Instead, you’re just as bad as the rest of them. Worse. You betrayed me, Davo. I won’t forget that.’
He had touched a nerve and he was pressing hard. I was determined not to let it hurt, or at least to ignore the pain.
‘You need more than imagination and vision to be a successful businessman, Guy,’ I said. ‘You have to be able to see what’s around you. The world has changed in the last few months. The Internet is not the way to make money. I can see that. The smart money can see that. If you can’t, that’s your problem.’
‘Christ, Mel, you talk to him. I can’t,’ muttered Guy.
Mel spoke. ‘David, I am giving you notice that you are obliged to sell your shares in Ninetyminutes back to the company at their nominal value.’
‘What? Sell them? Why?’
‘Because you were dismissed “with cause”.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that since you were passing confidential information to another company to be used against Ninetyminutes, Guy had cause to dismiss you. Under the terms of your contract, in those circumstances Ninetyminutes can require you to sell your shares at their nominal value. Which is one p, by the way.’
‘One p?’
‘That means you get fifty thousand pennies,’ said Guy, with an unpleasant smile.
‘That’s ridiculous. I didn’t talk to Champion Starsat until after Guy had fired me.’
‘You were gathering confidential information while you were at Ninetyminutes with the intention of using it against the company.’
‘Bollocks. You can’t prove any of that.’
‘Oh, can’t we?’ said Mel.
‘No. I’m getting a lawyer.’
‘It had better be a good one.’
‘It will be.’ I stood up. ‘You’re dragging Ninetyminutes down, Guy, and screwing me won’t save it.’
I left the building, seething. Guy couldn’t get his hands on my fifty thousand investment for five hundred quid. That would be totally unfair.
As I thought it over, I realized that Mel and Guy almost certainly had no case. They were trying to intimidate me, or infuriate me, or both. But I would go and see that lawyer.
Mel was clearly enjoying the whole thing. She was sitting where she wanted to be, next to Guy. Ingrid was right, she was filling the role of trusted adviser that used to be mine, and she was loving it. Mel and I had historically been on the same side. It was sad to see her as an adversary. But if I was Guy’s enemy, I was hers too, I could see that.
I met Ingrid for lunch in a café near Baker Street, only a few tube stops from Farringdon. We didn’t want to run the risk of bumping into anyone from Ninetyminutes. I told her about Mel and Guy, and asked her how the board meeting had gone.
‘It was tense,’ Ingrid said. ‘Guy was in a foul mood after seeing you. We began with the resolution to remove you as a director. It should have been a formality, but Guy wouldn’t stop ranting about what a traitor you were. Silverman had to calm him down so we could focus on the offer from Champion Starsat.’
‘Was Clare there?’
‘Oh, yes. There were the four of us: Guy, Silverman, Clare
and me. And Mel was there as the company’s legal adviser.’
‘So, what happened?’
‘Silverman told us the deal. Champion Starsat are offering eighteen million in cash for the whole company, subject to due diligence on their part. Guy can stay on if he wants, but their plan is to integrate ninetyminutes.com with their existing internet businesses. The offer expires at midnight on Thursday.’
‘Midnight on Thursday? But that’s only two days away!’
‘Yep. Madden is piling on the pressure.’
‘Did the board go for it?’
‘Guy made an impassioned plea for independence. You’ve heard it all before, but he was pretty eloquent. Then Mel started trying to pick holes in the Champion Starsat offer. Clare would have none of it; she said it was very straightforward and there was no reason to doubt it. She and Mel had a real fight; Silverman had to break it up. Clare won, though. Mel had to shut up.’
‘So Orchestra want to sell?’
‘Yep.’
‘Yes! What about Silverman?’
‘You know the way the shareholders’ agreement is with Orchestra. In times like this, they call the shots. Silverman knows that and he went with Clare.’
‘Which left you?’
‘I abstained,’ Ingrid said, smiling. ‘It seemed the best thing to do in the circumstances.’
‘So they’ve accepted the offer?’
‘Not quite. They’ve agreed to let Guy see if he can find an investor before Friday. If he has a firm unconditional offer on paper before then, they’ll reconsider. Otherwise they’ll accept.’
‘He’ll never manage that, will he?’
Ingrid shrugged. ‘You should never underestimate Guy,’
she said. ‘He’s going to see Mercia Metro TV in Birmingham this afternoon. He reckons they’d be an ideal fit.’
Ingrid was right, you never should underestimate Guy. But I felt a huge surge of relief. It looked as if my investment was safe. Much more importantly, my father wouldn’t lose any money. And I would be proved right. Guy would be devastated, of course, but after that morning’s meeting that didn’t concern me too much. In fact, I was rather pleased. I was also pleased for the staff, especially Gaz, whose website would continue.
We left the café to head back to Baker Street tube. As we paused to cross the road, Ingrid turned to check for traffic and grabbed my arm.
‘My God!’
‘What?’
‘Look!’
I looked. About twenty yards behind us a large figure in a Ninetyminutes T-shirt and baseball cap was shambling along the pavement towards us. Owen.
He stopped and stared at us, his face devoid of expression. A cab with its light on was approaching us along the Marylebone Road. I thrust out my arm and the taxi screeched to a halt. I bundled Ingrid inside.
I turned to look for Owen.
He was gone.
Anne Glazier was a small, harried woman of about thirty wearing an English suit and a Hermès scarf. The rapid clack of her heels on the hard stone floor echoed around the cavernous foyer of Coward Turner’s new building as she approached me, bulging briefcase weighing her down on one side. We perched uncomfortably on the leather-clad slabs that were supposed to act as seats for the big law firm’s visitors.
‘Thanks for seeing me,’ I said.
‘Not at all,’ she answered briskly. ‘A murder is important.’
‘It is indeed.’
‘I take it the police haven’t discovered who killed Tony Jourdan?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You know they spoke to me at length?’
‘Yes, yes, I know. But as I told you on the phone, I’m Guy Jourdan’s partner. The uncertainty over the whole affair is damaging our business, so I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened myself. I wanted to talk to you in person: I’m sure you know how important it is to get the details right.’
She frowned for a moment, but then nodded. She looked like the sort of woman who spent a lot of time getting the details right.
‘Can you tell me what happened that evening?’
‘All right. Mel’s an old friend from Manchester. We studied law together. Every now and then when I visit London I stay on an extra night with her. She does the same in Paris. We
see each other perhaps a couple of times a year. Anyway, that afternoon I went to her office to pick up her key. She told me she’d meet me at her flat later. She also said her boyfriend might be there.’
I picked up a note of distaste in Anne’s voice. ‘You weren’t happy about that?’
‘Not exactly. Especially when I heard who it was. I remembered Guy from several years ago. He wasn’t good news. I know he’s a friend of yours, but I’m sure you understand what I mean.’
I nodded. I did.
‘Also, I wanted to spend the evening with Mel myself. I mean, that’s why I was staying with her. But Mel was so excited it was embarrassing. You know her, she usually seems so cool. Apparently, Guy had stayed with her the night before and she was clearly convinced this was going to be the beginning of something serious.’
From her tone, Anne was less convinced.
‘So you were in Mel’s flat all evening?’
‘Yes. From about seven o’clock onwards. I dumped my stuff there that afternoon and went for a walk. I got back about seven.’
‘And then Guy showed up?’
‘Yes.’
‘At what time?’
‘I can’t remember exactly. I did tell the police. It was quite late.’
My interest quickened. ‘So you’re not sure when it was?’
‘Not now. It’s six months ago, isn’t it? But I was sure then. I gave them a precise time.’
‘Nine thirty?’ I said, remembering my conversation with Spedding.
‘That sounds right.’
‘How could you be so precise?’
Anne’s eyebrows knitted together as though she didn’t like the implication that she was ever anything but precise.
‘I was watching the clock. Mel wasn’t back from work. I was annoyed. As I said earlier, the whole point of this was to see her. I thought we’d go out to dinner or something.’