He attempted a grin. ‘What about you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m just cold, that’s all.’
Six
Boom
‘These have been anxious days,’ Raleigh Connor said, ‘anxious days for all of us.’ He paced in front of the window, his shoulders rounded, his hands pushed deep into his trouser pockets. ‘However,’ and he turned back into the room and smiled, ‘I’m delighted to be able to inform you that our troubles are over …’
Positioned at the head of the table, he seemed to be waiting for some kind of response. A spontaneous burst of applause, perhaps, or murmurs of appreciation. At the very least he must have expected to see his smile mirrored in the faces of his employees. But all Jimmy sensed was a subtle slackening of tension in the room, a kind of exhalation. He glanced at Neil and Debbie. They had been meeting in secret ever since the first threat of a leak halfway through July. They had been working sixty-hour weeks for almost two months. Quite possibly they were too exhausted to react. Still, someone had to say something.
‘That’s great news,’ Jimmy said. ‘Great news.’
But Debbie was frowning. ‘Can you give us any details?’
‘I prefer not to, Debbie.’
Connor’s voice did not invite further questioning. But this was a nuance which Debbie, as usual, failed to register.
‘You don’t think we’ve got a right to know?’ she said.
Connor’s lips tightened. ‘A right?’ he said, easing down into his chair. ‘No. This is not a matter of rights. This is a matter of what’s appropriate.’ He leaned his forearms on the table; his fingers calmly formed a pyramid. ‘All you need to know is what I’ve told you. There will be no scandal, no exposé. I’ve seen to that personally. To put it somewhat bluntly,’ and he paused, ‘we got away with it.’ His head rolled on his shoulders. His eyelids lowered a fraction as his gaze fixed on Neil Bowes. ‘Or, as your famous playwright said, “All’s well that ends well”.’
A sickly smile from Neil. No Chinese proverb, though. Not this time.
‘Obviously we won’t be resurrecting Project Secretary,’ Connor went on, turning to Jimmy. ‘It would be tempting fate. In any case, it’s my firm belief that it has already served its purpose, that of helping to establish Kwench! as a real power in the marketplace.’
Jimmy nodded in agreement.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ Connor said, ‘I’ll be holding a press conference. There are one or two important announcements I’d like to make. Also, I think it’s time to put an end to the rumours, once and for all.’ He slipped a sheaf of papers into his attaché case and snapped the brass locks shut. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me …’
‘A double espresso,’ Jimmy said, ‘that’s what I need.’
He was standing outside the lift with Neil and Debbie. After their meetings with Connor they would usually sit in the café round the corner and hold a brief post-mortem; the name of the café — Froth — provided the perfect ironic counterpoint to their tense discussions.
‘Me too,’ Neil said.
Debbie didn’t say anything, but when the doors opened she followed them into the lift. She stood as far away from Jimmy as she could, with her arms folded. Ever since she learned that Project Secretary had been Jimmy’s idea, she had treated him the way you might treat a suitcase that’s been abandoned at an airport. Sometimes she looked at him so warily that he had the feeling he might actually explode. He pressed G for Ground. The doors slid shut.
‘Well,’ he said with a sigh, ‘it’s a relief, I suppose.’
‘If it’s true,’ Neil said.
‘What about these announcements?’ Debbie said.
‘Don’t know about you two,’ Jimmy said, ‘but it’s a big promotion for me.’
Neil’s head swung round. ‘Really?’
Jimmy laughed.
‘Fuck you, Jimmy,’ Neil said gloomily.
‘What did you think of the Shakespeare?’ Jimmy said.
Debbie eyed him from the corner of the lift.
‘What about it?’ Neil said.
‘All’s well that ends well,’ Jimmy said. ‘Shakespeare didn’t say that. He wrote it. It’s the title of a play, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Not his special subject,’ Debbie said. And then, with a faint sneer, ‘Not his field of expertise.’
Neil watched the numbers declining as if they told of his own personal downfall. ‘So what is?’
‘I think we all know the answer to that one,’ Debbie said.
‘Do we?’ Neil said.
That evening Jimmy parked his car on Mornington Terrace and walked north, following the wall that separates the road from the railway cut. He had always been struck by the colour of the bricks, an unusual purple-grey, and the subtle sheen they had, the kind of iridescence that you find on coal. From behind the wall came the clink and rattle of trains picking their way over sets of points. He was thinking about the lunch he’d had with Richard Herring. When their coffee arrived, Richard had leaned over the table with that serious look he would sometimes, and rather self-consciously, adopt. ‘There have been some stories going round,’ he said. ‘About your company.’
Jimmy nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’
‘Pretty bizarre.’ Richard was watching him closely.
‘I know.’
‘Nothing in it, I suppose?’
‘Richard,’ Jimmy said. Then, when Richard’s face didn’t alter, he said, ‘Of course not. Totally without foundation. In fact, there’s a press conference tomorrow. Connor’s going to make a statement.’
‘You seem uneasy —’
‘I’m not uneasy, Richard. I’m just bored with the whole subject. I’ve been hearing nothing else for days.’
A silence fell.
Richard finished his coffee, setting the cup down on its saucer so carefully that it didn’t make a sound. Eyes still lowered, he said, ‘You won’t be needing any more of those invoices, I take it.’
It suddenly occurred to Jimmy that Richard might be taping the conversation and, though he instantly dismissed the thought as paranoid, he decided not to say anything else.
At last Richard sat back and, reaching for his napkin, dabbed his mouth. ‘It’s all right, Jimmy,’ he said, laughing. ‘I won’t tell.’
You’ve just lost the account, Jimmy thought. Not today. Not tomorrow either. But you’ve lost it.
He passed the house with the four motor bikes in its front garden. The window on the second floor was closed. Nobody home. At the end of the road he turned right, into Delancey Street. It had been a strange day, a day that had raised as many questions as it had answered. Halfway through the afternoon, for instance, Tony Ruddle had stopped him in the corridor and said, ‘You know what I decided while I was away?’
Jimmy had no idea, of course.
A wide smile from Ruddle, which revealed his chaotic library of teeth. ‘I decided,’ he said, ‘to let you dig your own grave.’
When Jimmy asked him what he meant by that, Ruddle wouldn’t answer. He just stood there, nodding and smiling, as if he was listening to a joke inside his head.
Walking more quickly now, Jimmy turned right again, making his way back towards his flat. He no longer paid too much attention to what Ruddle said. It was just hot air, bile, spleen; it had no consequence, no meaning. All the same, it could unsettle you.
Looking up, he saw a door open further down the street. Two people stepped out on to the pavement. They were in the middle of an argument. The man was balding, his skin-tight T-shirt highlighting a weightlifter’s chest. The woman was wearing sunglasses. With her low-cut scarlet dress, her muscular tanned legs and her frizzy hair, she had a Spanish look. The man strode on ahead, ignoring her. She kept shouting at him, though; you could almost see her words bouncing off the nape of his neck, his shoulderblades. Her breasts shook as she walked.