Clean Break

I was halfway through the painful process of signing checks when Josh arrived. I pretended astonishment. “Josh!” I exclaimed. “It’s between the hours of one and three and you’re not in a restaurant! What’s happened? Has the Stock Market collapsed?”

His sharp blue eyes crinkled in the smile that he’s practiced to maximize his resemblance to Robert Bedford. Frankly, I’m surprised the light brown hair hasn’t been bleached to perfect it, since Josh is a man whose energies are devoted to only two things-making lots of money and women. His track record with the latter is dismal; luckily he’s a lot more successful with the former, which is how he’s ended up as the senior partner of one of the city’s most successful master brokerages. Shelley developed a theory about Josh and women after she did her A-level psychology. She reckons that behind the confident facade there lurks a well of low self-esteem. So when it comes to women, his subconscious decides that any woman with half a brain and a shred of personality wouldn’t spend more than five minutes with him. The logical extension of that is that any woman who sticks around for more than six weeks must by definition be a boring bimbo, and thus he shouldn’t be seen dead with her.

Me, I think he just likes having fun. He swears he plans to retire when he turns forty, and that’s early enough to think about settling down. I like him because he’s always treated me as an equal, never as a potential conquest. I’m glad about that; I’d hate to lose my fast track into the bowels of the financial world. Believe me, the Nikkie Index doesn’t burp without Josh knowing exactly what it had for di

Josh flicked an imaginary speck of dust off one of the clients’ chairs and sat down, crossing his elegantly suited legs. “Things are changing in the big bad world of money, you know,” he said. “The days of the three-hour lunch are over. Except when it’s you that’s buying, of course.” He tossed a file onto my desk.

“You’ve stopped doing lunch?” I waited for the world to stop turning.

“Today, I had a Marks and Spencer prawn sandwich in the office of one of my principal clients. Washed down with a rather piquant sparkling mineral water from the Welsh valleys. An interesting diversification from coal mining, don’t you think?”

I picked up the file. “Kerrchem?” “The same. Want the gossip, since I’m here?” I gave him my best suspicious frown. “Is this going to cost me?”

He pouted. “Maybe an extra glass of XO?” “It’s worth it,” I decided. “Tell me about it.” “Okay. Kerrchem is a family firm. Started in nineteen thirty-four by Josiah Kerr, the grandfather of the present chairman, chief executive and managing director, Trevor Kerr. They made soap. They were no Lever Brothers, though they’ve always provided a reasonable living for the family. Trevor’s father, Hartley, was a clever chap, by all accounts, had a chemistry degree and he made certain they spent enough on R and D to keep ahead of the game. He moved them into the industrial cleaning market.” All this off the top of his head. One of the secrets of Josh’s success is a virtually photographic memory for facts and figures. Figures of the balance sheet variety, that is.

“Hartley Kerr was an only child,” he continued. “He had three kids-Trevor, Margaret and Elizabeth. Trevor, though the youngest, owns forty-nine percent of the shares, Margaret and Elizabeth own twenty percent each. The remaining eleven percent is held by Hartley Kerr’s widow, Elaine Kerr. Elaine is in her early seventies, in full possession of her marbles, lives in Bermuda and takes little part in things except for voting against Trevor at every opportunity. Trevor’s sons are still at school, but he has three nephews who work at Kerrchem. John Hardy works in R and D, his brother, Paul, is in accounts and Margaret’s son, Will Tomasiuk, is in sales. Trevor is, by all accounts, a complete and utter shit, but against all the odds, he appears to run the company well. Never been a history of industrial problems. Financially and fiscally, all seems aboveboard. Frankly, Kate, if Kerrchem were going public, they’re exactly the kind of company I’d advise you to put your money in if you wanted to keep it unspectacularly safe. Before people started dying, that is.”

“I suppose that rules out an insurance job, then. Is everybody in the family happy with Trevor’s stewardship? No young bucks snapping at his heels?”

Josh shook his head. “That’s not the word on the Exchange floor. The old lady only votes against Trevor because she thinks he’s not a patch on his old man and she wants to make a point. And the nephews have all learned the business from the bottom up, but they’re all climbing the greasy pole at an impressive rate. So, no, that kite won’t fly, Kate.” He glanced at a watch so slim it looked anorexic and uncrossed his legs. “You’re a star, Josh. I owe you a meal.” “Fix up a date with Julia, would you? I don’t have my diary with me.” He stood up and I came round the desk to swap kisses on both cheeks. I watched £500 worth of immaculate tailoring walk out the door. Not even that amount of dosh to spend on clothes could make me spend my days talking about pension funds and unit trusts.

On the other hand, all it took to get me salivating at the thought of an evening’s conversation about insurance was a profile from an ancient carving. Maybe I wasn’t such a smart cookie after all.

6

I’D ALMOST FORGOTTEN THERE ARE RESTAURANTS THAT DON’T serve dim sum. For as long as I’ve known Richard, he’s maintained that if you don’t.use chopsticks on it, it ain’t food. And Josh has recently taken to extracting his payment in-kind in Manchester ’s clutch of excellent Thai restaurants. I’m not sure if that’s down to the food or the subservient waitresses. Either way, I’d entirely lost touch with anything that hadn’t come out of a wok. Which made Michael Haroun a refreshing change in more ways than one.

He’d arrived promptly at twenty-nine minutes past seven. I’d grown so used to Richard’s flexible idea of time that I was still applying eye pencil when the doorbell rang. I nearly poked my eye out in shock, and had to answer the door with a tissue covering the damage. Eat your heart out, Cindy Crawford. Michael lounged against the doorframe, looking drop-dead gorgeous in blue jeans, navy silk blouson and an off-white collarless linen shirt that sure as hell hadn’t come from Marks and Spencer. My stomach churned, and I don’t think it was hunger. “Long John Silver, I presume,” he said.

“Watch it, or I’ll set the parrot on you,” I replied, stepping back and waving him in.

He shrugged away from the door and followed me down the hall. I gestured toward the living room and said, “Give me a minute.”

Back in the bathroom, I repaired the damage and surveyed myself in the full-length mirror. Navy linen trousers, russet knitted silk teeshirt, navy silk tweed jacket. I looked like I’d taken a bit of trouble, without actually departing from the businesslike image. Michael wasn’t to know this was my newest, smartest outfit. Besides, I’d told Richard my evening engagement was a business meeting, and I wasn’t entirely ready for him to get any other ideas if he saw me leave.

I rubbed a smudge of gel over my fingers and thrust them through my hair, which I’ve kept fairly short since I was shorn without consultation earlier in the year. My right eye still looked a bit red, but this was as good as it was going to get. A quick squirt of Richard’s Eternity by Calvin Klein and I was ready.

I walked down the hall and stood in the doorway. Michael obviously hadn’t heard me. He was deep in a computer-gaming magazine. Bonus points for the boy. I cleared my throat. “Ready when you are,” I said.

He looked up and smiled appreciatively. “I don’t want to sound disablist,” he said, “but I have to admit I prefer the two-eyed look.” He closed the magazine and stood up. “Shall we go?”