‘How prompt you are,’ said Dominic. He was beaming at her, looking positively smug.
‘You’ve done it, haven’t you?’ she said.
It was not really a question, because his face had already given her the answer. He was flushed with excitement. Obliquely she wondered if anything else excited Dominic as much as a computer. What about sex? Funny, she’d never asked Anna. They had talked often about sex. When she was much younger, Jennifer had given the men in her life points out of ten — much to Anna’s amusement. Marcus had always scored at least ten and sometimes 11 — also much to Anna’s amusement — but Jennifer never gave anything else away about him, and Dominic’s sexual prowess or lack of it had somehow not been mentioned. Jennifer had never even tried to imagine him in bed, and could not understand why her mind had jumped to such thoughts now. Perhaps it was tension. She made herself concentrate on the matter in hand.
Dominic had turned back to the computer and was beginning to explain.
‘With this disc, these codes and the right modem, I can now plug directly into the G7 computer system,’ he said.
Jennifer was no financial whizz-kid.
‘What’s G7?’ she asked.
Dominic looked amazed. ‘I thought you were supposed to be a journalist, for Christ’s sake.
The Group of Seven. The seven biggest money markets in the world. The seven countries that control the world’s finances.
‘Naturally they use computers to collate, store and communicate their business. Changes in our Bank Rate would all be communicated within G7 first. They have much more power than most people, including some financiers, think. If an exchange rate is about to be altered, a currency devalued, international loans given or called in — all are done through G7. For a private dealer to be able to plug into their computer is a bit like being fed a fortune on an intravenous drip.’
‘Bingo,’ said Jennifer. She had picked that up from Todd.
Dominic was fair bristling.
‘Rather more profitable than that,’ he said. ‘If you were fast enough you could always be ahead of the game. Making money is all about information, and you’d never get better information than from G7. You could make billions.
‘Amazing. Leaves you wondering how many people throughout the world have access to this.’
‘Is it legal?’ she asked, feeling stupid as soon as she said the words.
‘You’re kidding. This could blow the world money market sky high. Who did you get it from?’
‘An old friend,’ she replied.
He wasn’t really listening. He was busy on the keyboard.
‘I thought so, algorithms.’
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Algorithms. An obvious protection. Means you can’t copy it. I’m afraid of going any further in case I wipe it.’
He paused. ‘I suppose you want this disc back.’
She held out her hand.
‘No chance of making a quick million quid first?’
‘Dominic,’ she said. There was a warning in her voice.
‘You’re right of course. I’d get found out. I’m not designed to be a master criminal.’
‘No you’re not, and thank God for it.’
There was feeling in her voice. When he offered the disc to her, she took it with one hand and brushed his cheek with her other.
‘Thank you Dominic,’ she said quietly.
Briefly he took her hand in his.
‘Whatever it is you’re doing, be careful Jen,’ he said.
She felt the tears pricking again. Pull yourself together, she ordered herself, and tried her best to do so. Banter, that was the answer. She flashed a smile at him.
‘I never knew you cared,’ she said.
‘Don’t kid yourself,’ he told her. ‘My only concern for your welfare is that I have a crazy wife who does care, the silly cow.’
She left the room laughing. Dominic would probably never know how wonderfully reassuring she had found him.
Nineteen
She retrieved the Porsche from its parking meter and headed back to Chelsea. She locked the copy of Bill Turpin’s notebook and the computer disc in the car. There was little risk of Marcus discovering it missing before she had completed her plans; she would make sure he had no time to go into his study. As she walked in to the entrance hall of Marcus’s block of flats, carrier bags containing her purchases under her right arm, she checked her wristwatch. It was twelve-fifteen, and she was almost sure Marcus would not be back before one. The porter recognised her immediately and called the lift for her, as instructed by Marcus, pumping in the appropriate code to dispatch her to the penthouse floor. She wondered fleetingly what selection of women he had ushered up to the penthouse over the years, and decided this was not the time to dwell on that.
As she shut Marcus’s front door, the phone rang, and she picked up the receiver in the hall. It was him, as she had guessed it would be.
‘Have you just got up?’ he asked. He sounded very good-humoured. He always did when he had got his own way.
‘Certainly not,’ she replied.
‘I called earlier, you must have heard the phone?’ he went on.
‘I told you, I needed to go back home to get some clean things.’
‘You sound tense.’
She must be careful, Marcus was no pushover.
‘Just knackered, I’m out of practice.’
‘Stand by. What you need is one of my knock-your-socks-off Bloody Marys. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
He had gone before she could ask him how long that would be.
She piled her purchases on the bed in the main bedroom and went into the study. Just in case he did look in there, she decided to check it out carefully. It looked fine, nothing seemed to be out of place. In fact there was very little that could have been put out of place, but she knew that if the Mont Blanc fountain pen were to be moved an inch away from where it normally lay, Marcus would notice at once.
Quickly she returned to the bedroom, removed all her clothes, and gratefully stepped under the pressurised shower in the en-suite bathroom. It wasn’t over yet, not nearly over, she thought, as she thoroughly shampooed her hair. Then, standing naked on the thick towelling mat, she rubbed herself all over with the newly purchased moisturising cream. She wrapped herself in one of Marcus’s big luxurious towels, and scrubbed her teeth energetically. She put moisturiser on her face and then applied a little mascara and lipstick, gave herself a quick spray of the Cartier perfume she always carried in her handbag, and dressed in the clean underwear beneath her new baggy tee shirt. She deliberately did not put her jeans back on, because Marcus never had been able to resist her legs. She was still brushing the tangles out of her hair when she heard him turn his key in the lock, and she did not go to meet him. He came looking for her in the bedroom and stood in the doorway clutching a huge bunch of lily of the valley in one hand and a big plastic bag of limes, for the Bloody Marys, in the other.
‘You look good enough to eat,’ he growled at her.
She turned away from the mirror, smiling. ‘Yes please,’ she said.
He threw the bunch of flowers at her and she caught them easily. He put down the bag of limes on the dressing table, strode across the room until he was standing behind her, and buried his face in her neck.
‘You smell so clean, so sweet,’ he said.