I Am Gold (6 page)

‘Not local. Could be Lancashire – Manchester?'

‘A famous hire-for-the-day hitman agency there,' Iles said. ‘Its sales slogan, “We aim to please.”' Two ambulances, two dog-handler vans, a fire engine, a catering wagon, and more police cars pulled in.

Lyndon said: ‘The manageress, early fifties we're told, sensible and cool, married with teenage children. Mrs Beatrice South. The woman he took from the street, thirties, jeans, denim jacket, desert boots, holding a carrier bag –perhaps out shopping. The gunman, thin, about five foot nine, maybe late twenties or a bit older, dark jacket, fair-haired – a lot of it – brown cowboy boots. The car was stolen in Preston a week ago. Nothing aboard to give us an identity.'

‘He's shed the balaclava, has he? We keep on talking, Clive,' Iles said. ‘Do nothing to scare or anger him. Don't press for a name. Offer food and drink, to be delivered by an unarmed officer. Attrition, gradualness – essential here. Almost all similar previous situations prove it. He'll probably know he's messed up – hit the wrong people, including a child. He might feel he can't do any worse. So, why not knock off a hostage or two? Don't panic him into that sort of neat, slaughterous logic.'

‘We're offered use of a psychologist, sir,' Lyndon said.

‘Oh? Not some twat called Andrew Rockmain, is it?' Iles said.

‘It could look very negative later if you've rejected him, sir,' Harpur said.

‘What do you mean, “later”?' Iles said.

‘Later,' Harpur replied.

‘If people get killed here?' Iles asked.

‘Later,' Harpur said. ‘We should try everything.'

‘Rockmain?' Iles said

‘Including Rockmain,' Harpur said. ‘You don't want a
Guardian
headline, “Police chief spurned psychologist help in fatal siege.”'

‘I'm
not
the Chief,' Iles said.

‘Journalistic licence. You're head of Operations. This is an operation. You're Gold.'

‘I agree with Mr Harpur, sir,' Lyndon said.

‘Who the fuck asked
you
?' Iles replied. ‘Rockmain has a green corduroy suit.'

Chapter Ten

2007

In the morning after Denz's funeral Shale went to see his lawyers at their offices near Lincoln's Inn. He left Hubert to get on with whatever he wanted to and gave him a couple of hundred for expenses and so on. You had to be thoughtful with them. Bodyguards operated at special closeness to you. They could be fucking dangerous.

Manse often used to think that if he hadn't chosen a career in commerce he might have liked to be a lawyer himself. The many big volumes they had to keep handy to remind theirselves of old cases must be very heavy, but Manse knew a lad who could have put up extremely strong shelves, using sapele wood and Rawlplugs. What impressed him about lawyers was they knew there was not just one kind of truth. They realized it had a lot of aspects. They was not tied down and stuck on to one narrow sort. It was their job to look after the side of truth that suited their client best, because the client was paying them.

Of course, the other side's lawyers would be doing the same for
their
client. Truth depended on where you was looking at it from. The lawyers looked at it from where their client wanted to look at it, and would be ready with many arguments, in court or by letter. This could be very helpful for a client. Manse believed absolutely in being helpful to people when it was not stupid to be helpful to them, and if you was their lawyer, obviously it would not be stupid to help them. This could get your partnership well known and make it a success. To be helpful to them was why you was their lawyer, wasn't it?

Naturally, Manse had to adjust the truth a certain amount, anyway, before he dealt with his lawyers. It would not be clever to let them know where his main money came from, or much about it at all, really. They thought the haulage and scrap metal firm produced his income. Or they
pretended
to think it. They did not want to be told the reality, did they? Certain tough and kinky rules cooked up by the law chiefs governed their game and they had to be careful which kinds of business folk they took on to their books, fearing taint. Too much truth could be … too much. They'd probably heard ‘haulage and scrap' mentioned by quite a few of their customers and would never laugh or even smile at it. You expected this kind of considerate treatment when you was paying the sort of fees lawyers wanted, especially London lawyers. It was all based on so much an hour, or not
so
much but
very
much an hour. Manse would write the cheque, though, and never niggle. He needed them. He felt more comfortable knowing they was there and screwing him the way top lawyers did to folk throughout the centuries. You could not get safe, and stay safe, cheap.

The lawyer he had to see was a woman and black. Manse did not mind. He felt they should be allowed to get on if they was good enough. That is, women, white or black, and blacks, women or men. He thought she took a reasonable interest in the parts of his life he had come to talk about, namely, the divorce and his will. He found it strange in a way to think of her ancestors in, say, Jamaica or the Congo, ages ago, and now producing this woman who would look into some of the most important matters of his personal self. Those ancestors could never of imagined one of their descendants might one day be taking a detailed scan of Manse's private situation. She was probably brought up in this country. She didn't have an accent, except London. But, obviously, her roots would go back to somewhere else.

She was about thirty-two, wearing light-coloured glasses and an engagement ring and wedding ring, so she should understand OK about divorce. The light-coloured glasses didn't spoil her looks. In fact, they seemed just right to show she was a lawyer, not a waitress somewhere. Manse would certainly never try any moves with her, though, because it would be not very appropriate, considering what he'd come to see her about. And, in any case, she had the rings. They might mean something. The engagement ring had two square diamonds at least half a centimetre by half a centimetre, and most likely genuine. The wedding ring was wide and pale. The paleness did not mean it was low grade gold. Manse had heard that Welsh gold had this whitish tinge, and the Royal Family liked it. Her husband might also be a lawyer and they could have quite a decent home somewhere with a fair whack of money going in. Good luck to them. If she had children she might be able to pay a nanny, ethnic or not. This was how things was changing in Britain. Why not? To quite a degree Manse believed in change and equal chances.

She had some papers in front of her on the desk. She said: ‘They're asking for a one-off payment of two million to your wife, to complete the divorce, Mr Shale.'

‘That's the kind of figure I thought they'd come up with.'

The room was big. Manse would not say
too
big, though some might consider the size of it showy. Most probably it could be called a suite. One side had a big table with nine chairs around. It must be for conferences, proving she could call people here and they'd have to come. Eight of the chairs was ordinary, straight-backed office furniture. At one end of the table, though, he noticed a much larger chair, with arms to it and a high back. This must be where she sat when she organized one of her meetings. Manse thought she deserved it if she had done all her law exams and brought in a lot of fees to the company, Crossman, Fenton and Stuckey. She was Fenton, Joan Fenton. He would of been pissed off if they had given him less than a partner. He had to be treated as considerable.

She said: ‘As I see it, Sybil left you and the children. Desertion. We could reasonably dispute any claim at all, let alone two million.'

‘She'll need a bit of cash.'

‘But she's not your responsibility now.'

‘You can't just step away from that kind of thing.'

‘This is what divorce means. It's an act of stepping away.'

Manse didn't get ratty at being given a lesson like this, even though she was a woman and black. In her kind of job she would be used to having her say. They spent their time arguing. In any case, he would admit she was probably right when she said ‘an act of stepping away'. Lawyers could be like that – blunt. Manse wondered if he felt scared of stepping away. Did he want to hang on to Sybil somehow? But giving her big money wouldn't help him hang on to her. It would help her stay away from him. He felt confused now.

‘I can understand you don't want to seem punitive,' the lawyer said.

‘That would be cruel,' Manse said. ‘Syb's Syb.'

‘Syb's a bit of a slag.'

‘Oh, I –'

‘We don't reward her for sloping off and ditching you, Matilda and Laurent.'

‘She's taken up with some nobody as far as I can make out. He's got no career worth talking about.'

‘My notes say he's a vet.'

‘Along those lines. Or a roofer. She's used to expenditure. All right, she's living in North Wales where the shops in Rhyl or Prestatyn are not Rome or Paris, but I don't like to think of her having to skimp. If you're stuck in a place like that you probably need to do a lot of purchasing to help your morale. I heard there's a town there that looks like it's made of slate and it's always raining. I expect there'll be a station and trains to London or Manchester where she could find fashion items, travelling First in case of unpleasantness from soccer hooligans and so on. She flits about. Well, obviously. It costs. Plus, there's the skiing and riding and Wimbledon.'

‘I'd like to offer them something – a token – to show the sods you're not vindictive, but nothing like what they're asking. This is a real, standard try-on. Of course it is. It's the kind of thing we expect at the start of a negotiation, not much more than a formality, the insolent prats.'

‘Ah,' he replied.

‘What?'

‘You're saying it wouldn't be good for your image or the firm's if you agreed too easily to what they're asking. You'd look soft, a pushover?'

‘Fifty grand would be generous beyond,' she said. ‘I'll offer them twenty as starters, and see where we go from there.'

‘She's the mother of my children,' Manse said.

‘Well, yes. That's quite usual for a wife. What's not so usual is she buggers off and abandons them.'

‘Have you got children?'

‘Have
I
?'

‘Well, yes. Have you?'

‘This meeting's about you, Mr Shale, not me. We're getting along really well now, aren't we? And so to the will.'

It struck Manse as wrong, this damn breeziness from her. She did not seem interested in whether he could of paid the two million if he had to. It made him feel small. They ask for two million and she's going to offer twenty grand, maybe going to fifty, so as not to seem vindictive, as she called it. Wouldn't it seem like vindictive to reply with a brush-off twenty grand when they'd demanded a hundred times more? He saw now it had been crazy even to think of making a move for her, and even to think of making a move for her and rejecting the idea. This one didn't hardly know he existed. She came from a family tradition going back generations there in the Caribbean or Africa and didn't bother with people like Manse, except as business. He had always recognized he was a flash-in-the-pan. It became so clear when he was up against a lot of history, like hers. He was in off the street from some dump outside London and she'd settle his little matters fast and send him back there. He'd more or less said the two million was OK with him, which meant he had a lot more beside that. But she did not seem to care. She would arrange his life for him like she wanted it and maybe not like
he
wanted it and then it would be, ‘Goodbye
Mr
Shale, we've got along really well, haven't we?' In a couple of weeks he'd get a letter saying she couldn't work it down to twenty grand but kept it to forty grand and in a couple of weeks later here comes the bill, terms strictly thirty days, and meaty.

‘We have to cater for what happens if you die soon,' she said.

‘Well, yes.'

‘That is, before the children are old enough to take their shares of the inheritance direct and in full.' ‘Well, yes.'

‘I know there are physical risks in the haulage and scrap business. Runaway vehicles. Old iron heaps shifting.'

‘Well, yes.'

‘It's obvious we mustn't have Sybil controlling trust funds meant to guard assets for the children. The divorce helps us here, certainly. She'll no longer have much of a case for administering any such trust. If you remarry or begin an established partnership, we can then do a will that specifically names the new wife or partner as principal trustee. That would finally cut Sybil right out.'

‘In her own way, she's quite fond of the children.'

‘Which way is that?'

‘I don't think she'd scheme to cheat them out of their legacies.'

‘Do you want the money you've managed to put by through enterprise and prudence in the haulage and scrap trades, despite competition and hazard, to go to some bed-hopping slapper, and whomever she's shagging at the time, singular or various, instead of remaining safe for Laurent and Matilda until they reach due age?'

‘I don't think of Syb as –'

‘Are the children to be sole beneficiaries?' she replied. ‘I mean, as things stand at present. That is, you, divorced, single, unattached. Do you have other family you might want to see right?'

‘Not exactly family.'

‘Kith rather than kin?'

‘That kind of thing.'

‘Women?'

‘These are people who –'

‘You started relationships for comfort when Sybil pushed off? Did you cohabit?' ‘That matters?' he asked.

‘It might give extra credibility to any claim they made against your estate. If they had the run of your home it suggests depth. How many?'