Mrs Black … I assumed from the weight on her left-hand ring finger … opened a door halfway along the corridor, then followed me into the long room behind. ‘I take the minutes of the meetings,’ she explained quietly.
My new colleagues were gathered at the far end of the board table, coffee cups and saucers in hand. I’d seen Culshaw on TV the night before of course, and I knew who the others were, since the annual report had included directors’ photographs, and the odd one out had to be the company secretary, Wylie Smith, a plump little guy in his forties, who had the air of someone who’s always slightly out of breath, a man running for a bus who’s never going to catch it.
The other woman in the room, Gillian Harvey, was all smiles in the report mugshot, but not in real life. I’d read up on her; she was a banker, which may have helped explain her cheerless expression as she eyed me up and down, making me feel glad that I’d dressed the way I had. There had been a period in the company’s history when its bank had felt it necessary to insist on having someone on the board, and she’d been put in place then. Those days were long gone, but somehow she’d managed to hang around.
Gerry Meek, the finance director, middle-aged, balding and bespectacled, hadn’t been foisted on Susie by anyone. He’d been her choice when she had taken complete control of the company from her old man, to replace his less efficient predecessor. He’d been around as she’d rebuilt the group from the mess she’d inherited, so he must have been competent to say the least. Whether he’d also been compliant in recent months, I planned to find out.
Phil Culshaw came towards me, hand outstretched, white-haired, tanned, with the weathered complexion of a sailor. That’s what he had been, mostly, easing out of his accountancy firm when Oz had recruited him and brought him in on a temporary basis that had become permanent when he and Susie had moved offshore. He was smiling, but I eyeballed him and didn’t see it reflected there.
‘Primavera,’ he exclaimed, ‘welcome to the Gantry Group. You’ve met Cathy, let me introduced the rest of my colleagues.’ He did the rounds; the two men were pleasant, if diffident, but the grey-haired lady banker gazed at me as if I was a member of a parliamentary select committee.
‘Can we have a word in private?’ the managing director murmured.
I beamed at him. ‘Once I have a coffee in my hand, Mr Culshaw, certainly,’ I replied. I used his surname deliberately and spoke loudly enough for the rest to hear.
Wylie Smith rushed to the coffee pot, poured me a cup and handed it to me. I thanked him, declined the Belgian chocolate biscuits, then walked to the other end of the table, leaving Culshaw to follow behind.
‘Yes?’ I said sweetly, being a bitch and revelling in it. Fucking man had annoyed me, twice, first by using my given name without invitation and second when he’d said ‘my colleagues’ rather than ‘our’. I’d gone in there with the intention of building a high wall in my mind between him and his nephew, but I was having trouble.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get hold of you yesterday,’ he murmured, dispensing with the smile.
‘You got close, though. I assume that was you who spoke to my son in the hotel last night.’
His jaw dropped. ‘That was …? My God, I don’t mind telling you …’
I cut him off. ‘You don’t have to. I know what you thought. If you hadn’t hung up on him, we’d have made contact then. If we had,’ I asked, ‘what would you have said to me?’
‘More or less what I said in my television interview. I’d have asked you about the advisability of continuing with this meeting.’
‘That’s what I assumed. And I’d have told you then what I’m telling you now, that there is not one good business reason for cancelling it, and several valid ones for pressing ahead, as I intend to do.’
‘Then I have to tell you that in my opinion, your taking the chair of this company, unless it’s so you can resign immediately, isn’t in its best interests.’
I pursed my lips. ‘In that case,’ I murmured, as I sipped the worst coffee I’d tasted since I left prison, ‘we’d better bring the meeting to order, and we’ll see what I do.’
I sat myself down in the big chair at the head of the table, that I just knew had been Susie’s, and I called along to Wylie Smith, ‘Mr Secretary, I’d be grateful if we could convene the meeting now. It’s gone ten a.m.’
‘Of course, Madam Chairman,’ he replied, picking up his papers as I took out my meeting folder and laid my bag on the floor. The other two directors followed suit, although Harvey shot me a glare that made me wonder if she’d gobbed in my coffee when no one was looking.
When everyone was in place, I kicked off.
‘The first thing I want to do as your chair,’ I began, ‘is to call for two minutes’ contemplative silence in memory of my friend Susie. I’ve known her, I believe, for longer than any of you have, so do not any of you think for a second that I feel any lightness in my heart as I sit in her chair. I wish that she was in it, and not me, but she isn’t, and so I promise you as I promised her that I will preserve and protect the company that bears her name.’
I fell silent, and so did the others. When the two minutes were up, Wylie Smith signalled the fact by shuffling in his seat and distributing agendas. ‘Since this is an unscheduled meeting of the board,’ he explained, ‘this is a very short list of business. As always it begins with minutes of the last meeting. You have all received them, yes?’
‘Taken as read,’ Culshaw grunted.
‘Was that a motion?’ I asked him, calmly.
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘of course, I’m sorry.’
‘Seconded,’ Harvey snapped.
I looked at Meek; he nodded approval. ‘Agreed,’ I declared, glancing at Cathy Black, who was taking what I guessed was old-fashioned shorthand, in a pad.
‘Second item on the agenda is chair’s remarks,’ I noted. ‘That’s as well, because I have a few.’
‘Before we proceed,’ Gillian Harvey interrupted, ‘I would like to ask you to explain to us your qualifications for chairing this company. Your background calls them into question.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked her, evenly.
‘You have a rather colourful past, if you don’t mind me saying so. Is it not the case that you have a criminal conviction?’
I laughed. ‘Isn’t that funny,’ I exclaimed. ‘There were people running around in the City yesterday asking every sector analyst they could find that selfsame question, and here you go and bring it up at a board meeting. Your bank, Miss Harvey; it employs people to run around in the City of London, doesn’t it, spreading information and asking questions?’
‘Oh, really, that’s-’
‘True or false?’
‘True, but-’
‘Stop,’ I snapped. ‘I have another question. Were any of those people involved in spreading the word about me? But think before you answer. I spoke to Cress Oldham, the company’s financial PR adviser, this morning and instructed her to find out who they were. I could receive a text from her at any moment. So once again, were your people out there spreading the poison to undermine me as chair, and severely damaging the company’s share price in the process?’
She stared at the table. ‘They could have been.’
‘I’ll take that as a “yes”. On whose instructions?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Don’t prevaricate, Miss Harvey. If I phone the chief executive of your bank right now, and ask him if it’s his policy to brief against the chair of a client company, in any circumstances, he’s going to do his nut and launch an investigation. When the bank’s messengers are put up against the wall, who are they going to name as the person who sent them out there?’
She sighed. ‘They’re going to blame me,’ she confessed. And then she shot me a look that was nothing but pure envy.
‘Because you expected to be chair yourself,’ I said, ‘and that’s not a question; I can see it.’ I looked at the company secretary. ‘Mr Smith, please give Miss Harvey a notepad and a pen, if she needs one.’