For the first time in three days there was the glimmer of hope in Mel’s eyes.
I was doing lengths in the pool the next morning when I became aware of laughter on the terrace. Familiar laughter. I stopped swimming and looked up. There were Tony, Guy and Hoyle, broad grins on their faces. Miguel was opening a bottle of champagne.
I pulled myself out of the water and grabbed a towel. Ingrid and Mel emerged from the house.
The cork popped. Tony poured.
‘I told you Patrick would get him off,’ Tony said, slapping Hoyle on the back. ‘Hey, where’s Owen? Guy, get him, will you? I won’t have him missing this.’
Guy went off to look for his brother.
‘Of course, it helps that they know who did kill her,’ Hoyle said.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
‘The gardener,’ he replied. ‘The police have been looking for him everywhere. But it’s hard to find one Arab boy on the Riviera, there are so many places he can disappear.’
‘How do they know it was him?’ I asked.
‘He ran away, didn’t he?’ Tony said. ‘And they found Dominique’s empty jewellery case in his room. I hope they catch the bastard.’
‘But they don’t have any conclusive proof?’ I persisted.
Tony frowned, unamused by my quibbling. ‘That’s conclusive enough for me. Ah, here he is!’ he said as he saw Owen approaching behind his brother. There was almost a spring in his step. He was as pleased as the rest of us to have Guy back. ‘Champagne, Owen?’
‘I’ll take a Coke.’
‘You’ll have champagne,’ his father said, thrusting the glass into his hands. ‘Here’s to liberty.’
We all drank. All of us but Dominique, I thought. She wouldn’t be joining in the celebration of her stepson’s newfound freedom.
Mel, Ingrid and I left as soon as we possibly could. Neither Guy nor his father was sad to see us go, although Tony was polite and charming to us, even to me. But he called a taxi this time to take us to the airport.
I packed my stuff and went to look for Guy. I found him beneath the watchtower staring out at the sea. I sat next to him.
‘I know this was a horrible week, but thank you for inviting me,’ I said.
He didn’t answer. I waited. He wasn’t going to answer.
‘OK,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Goodbye, Guy.’
I turned to go. ‘Davo?’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you. For what you said to Sauville.’
‘No problem.’ I considered trying to say more, but Guy was still looking away into the distance, his hunched back towards me. I was dismissed. I should leave.
Ingrid, Mel and I climbed into the taxi for the airport.
‘Thank God that’s over,’ Ingrid said as the car pulled out of the courtyard, through the electrically driven iron gates and on to the road down to the Corniche.
‘Yeah. And thank God Guy’s out of jail.’
‘That was all very convenient, wasn’t it?’ Ingrid said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’ She was looking at me closely.
I thought through Ingrid’s suggestion. It was indeed fortunate that the gardener had disappeared. I remembered hearing Hoyle repeat his name to Guy. I remembered the mysterious footprint from Guy’s shoe. And Owen’s reaction when he heard that his brother had been arrested, almost as if he knew something.
Then I stopped thinking.
‘You know what?’ I said. ‘I don’t care. I’m just glad to be out of here.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Mel, her voice stronger than it had been for the last four days.
Tony hadn’t come through with his earlier promise of the fare home and my meagre funds wouldn’t stretch to a one-way plane ticket, but Ingrid lent me two hundred francs which gave me enough for a bus fare. The taxi dropped me off at the bus station and I was sorry to say goodbye to her and Mel, but very pleased to get on the coach for the long trip back to England.
As the bus powered up the autoroute towards the lowering cloud of northern France, I pondered the one lesson I had learned from the previous week. I had finally glimpsed what the glamorous lives of people such as Guy were really like and I had discovered something.
They weren’t nearly as desirable as they seemed.
17
May 1999, Clerkenwell, London
It was Monday morning and we had the keys to the new office. The whole team showed up: Guy, myself, Owen, Gaz, Neil, Sanjay, Amy and Michelle. For most of them it was their first day in the job. Everyone was wearing jeans and ready for hard physical labour.
Britton Street was picturesque in its way, a narrow lane of modest Georgian houses and converted metalworking shops like ours, with the white spire and golden weathervane of St James’s Church, Clerkenwell, peeking out above the rooftops. There were signs of the dot-com invasion everywhere: young thin men in fleeces with wispy facial hair, flashier men and women in black on mobile phones, convenience shops full of convenience snacks, ‘Offices To Let’ signs where old jewellers’ or watchmakers’ premises were being refurbished. But our own office was nothing speciaclass="underline" one side of the fourth floor of a brick building with white walls, blue-painted pipework, a light grey carpet and no furniture.
Workmen brought up second-hand desks, chairs, partitions and computer equipment, which everyone shifted around enthusiastically. We had thought of most things in advance, like the photocopier and the computer network, but we needed a coffee machine, a water cooler and a fridge. Michelle was despatched to find them. Gaz had arrived with his uncle’s van, in the back of which was a table-football table and a pinball machine. He said it was pointless keeping them at home if he was going to be at the office all the time. He and Neil played a couple of games of table football; they were both astoundingly good.
Owen had planned the phone system and the computer network meticulously, but it was Sanjay, rather than he, who directed the engineers who came to install things. The characters of the new members soon became clear. Amy was an adept organizer with leanings towards bossiness, who spent most of the day wandering round with a cloth and a bucket of hot water wiping things. Neil was willing but useless, but Gaz turned out to be surprisingly practical, especially with wires. Owen could lift anything. Miraculously, by four o’clock, the office was functional.
Guy disappeared for ten minutes and came back with three bottles of champagne and some glasses.
‘To ninetyminutes.com,’ he said.
We all raised our glasses and drank. I looked around at the odd assortment of twentysomethings, dirty, sweaty but smiling, and thought how much happier I was to be there rather than surrounded by the humourless bankers of Gurney Kroheim.
We were aiming to launch in August in time for the coming football season, only three months away. This meant that we needed to finish the site by mid-July to give us time to test it and to iron out any bugs. It was a tight deadline, but we were confident we could meet it. Owen had finalized the architecture of the system, and we had signed contracts with the firm that would house and maintain our server. Mandrill’s design was coming on well and Gaz was putting together some excellent content.
But I was becoming increasingly worried about Torsten and the venture capitalists. Suddenly cash was flying out of the door. Unsurprisingly, none of our suppliers was willing to advance credit to an internet start-up; it was all cash up front. It was fortunate we had my father’s funds, otherwise we would have been caught short. Alarmed by the dwindling balance of the company account, I checked my cash forecasts. We would run out in ten days unless we received Torsten’s two million pounds.