‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Quite sure. Sorry, old chap.’
I sighed. ‘OK, Henry. Thanks for looking.’
‘No problem. And good luck.’
I turned towards Guy, who had just finished his own phone conversation. He saw the look on my face. ‘Oh, no.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ I said.
‘Why? I thought he got it. Why did he say no?’
‘Management.’
‘Management? Meaning me, I suppose.’
I nodded.
‘Bloody hell! What do these people expect? It’s like Catch 22. They won’t give you any money unless you’ve been a big success before, but you can’t be a really big success unless they give you money. It makes no sense! I’ll tell him.’ Guy reached for his phone.
‘Whoa! Wait a moment. He’s not going to change his mind just because you shout at him. He gave us a good hearing, we can’t ask for any more than that.’
Guy withdrew his hand. ‘All right. So where does that leave us?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘Oh, come on. There are plenty more VCs out there. Let’s have another look at the BVCA website.’ He began tapping at his keyboard.
‘No, Guy.’
‘Davo! We need the money!’
I nodded. ‘But we’re not going to get it from venture capitalists. At least, not yet.’
Guy could see the way I was looking at him. He knew what I was thinking. ‘No, Davo. No way.’
‘You’ve got to try. He’s our last chance.’
‘I’ve told you, I want to succeed without him or not at all.’
‘That was OK when we talked about this a month ago,’ I said. ‘But now things have changed. Everyone out there has put most of what they own into this. So have I. Ninetyminutes isn’t about just you any more. It’s about all of us.’
‘He’ll say no.’
‘We’ll never know that until we try.’
Guy closed his eyes and raised his face towards the ceiling. I let him struggle with himself. Finally, he spoke. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll go and see him. You have to come with me, though.’
‘But he hates me more than he hates you.’
‘I know. But I’m not doing this alone.’
This time, Tony Jourdan didn’t pick us up from Nice airport. We took a taxi. We barrelled along a highway through the centre of the city and climbed the steep Corniche. As I saw the sea, the trees and the rocky cliffs, that week twelve years before came back to me. I shuddered. And I remembered Tony’s threat to me. Did I really think he would talk to me, even twelve years on?
The door was answered by Miguel, who looked even smaller than I remembered him. He greeted Guy politely and led us through the house to the terrace. Once again, the view took my breath away. Cap Ferrat reached out into the Mediterranean, green and rich and lush, with its fabulous mansions and flotilla of super-expensive white craft buzzing around its shoreline. This early in the summer the sky was an even clearer blue. I couldn’t help taking a quick look for Corsica, and I thought I caught a grey smudge on the horizon.
Tony rose from a chair to meet us. The wrinkles around his eyes had deepened and his sandy hair was fading to grey at the edges, but he still looked slim and active. At least he wasn’t openly hostile. He smiled politely and introduced me to the dark-haired woman who was sitting with him. She stood up, and towered over him by at least three inches. A beautiful woman, I was not surprised to see, but in a more subtle way than Dominique.
‘Sabina, this is David Lane, an old school friend of Guy’s.’
‘Hello,’ she said, with a friendly smile. She held out her hand for me to shake, and then kissed Guy on both cheeks. A baby started crying inside. The noise shocked me, it seemed so out of place in these surroundings.
‘I must go and check on Andreas,’ said Sabina in a Germanic accent. ‘Make sure you see your brother before you go, Guy.’
‘I will.’
We sat down. I looked around. Up at the house and Dominique’s bedroom, which was presumably Tony and Sabina’s bedroom now, the place where I had lost my virginity and she had lost her life. At the guest cottage where I had skulked during the French police’s inquisition, at the old Roman watchtower where Tony had seduced Mel and where his son had declared his hatred of me.
Tony was watching. ‘I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again,’ he said. But he said it without hostility, as though he wanted to note our past enmity for the record, before putting it to one side.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘And I’m sorry. But this isn’t a social call.’
‘Of course not. You want some more money, don’t you, Guy?’
‘Yes,’ said Guy.
‘And why should I give it to you?’
‘I don’t know why you should,’ he answered. ‘Which is why I haven’t asked you before. In fact, I didn’t want to ask you even now, but David insisted.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said Tony, glancing inquiringly at me.
‘Guy didn’t want to ask you for money because he didn’t want to rely on you to bail him out of a hole yet again,’ I said. ‘But I’m not asking you to bail Guy out. I’m asking you to invest in something because you can make a good profit out of it.’
‘Hm.’ Tony lifted up the newspaper on the table to reveal the business plan we had couriered to him the day before. He picked it up and began leafing through it. ‘Did you write this?’ he asked me.
‘Some of it. Guy wrote most of it, though.’ Tony glanced at his son. It was a good document, and Tony knew it.
Then he started asking questions. They came thick and fast. Henry Broughton-Jones had asked some pretty good general questions, but they were nothing like this inquisition. Although Tony had only had the plan a day, he had virtually memorized it. He asked me to justify the assumptions behind the financial projections, an uncomfortable process. He had looked at several other soccer sites already on the web, and he wanted to know what we thought of them. He asked us about Champion Starsat, the big satellite TV company, and what their strategy for the web would be.
After an hour and a half, Miguel brought lunch and the questions continued. We did well. Guy in particular held his own. He knew his stuff, Tony couldn’t deny it.
‘So, Dad,’ said Guy eventually. ‘What do you think?’
Tony looked from Guy to me and back again to his son. He grinned. ‘It’s a good idea. I’ll do it.’
Guy could hardly believe it. His jaw dropped open.
‘I need to make some real money again,’ said Tony. ‘All this has to be maintained.’ He gestured to the house and gardens around him, seeming to take in his wife and son indoors. ‘The life went out of the property market years ago. The Internet is the place to be. The challenge will be good for me. But,’ he said, glancing at me, ‘David is right. I’m going to do this on a purely commercial basis. Which means I’m going to want a stake for my two million quid. A big stake.’
Guy and I exchanged glances. ‘Fair enough.’
Tony held out his hand for his son to shake.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ Guy said.
‘Good. I’ll come to England next week and we can finalize things with your lawyers.’ Guy winced. Tony noticed it. ‘You do have lawyers, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Guy. ‘We have a very good lawyer.’
‘Well, I look forward to negotiating with him.’
I wasn’t quite sure how much Mel would look forward to negotiating with Tony. Neither was Guy, judging by his expression.
We ordered a taxi to take us back to the airport, and after a quick look at Guy’s six-month-old half-brother, we left. Neither of us wanted to stay in that house a moment longer than we had to.