High Finance

13

High Finance

    Rick Teasdale and Dennis Simpson hadn’t been lying to Taggy: they really were in the Cooks to look at possible sites for an up-market ecolodge. And the reason they were staying at Palmyra Polynesia, which they hadn’t imparted to its receptionist, was that they’d had a joint bet at Ascot this year which had resulted in a large win, that they hadn’t told their wives about. Their English firm, YDI, had sprung for a moderately priced hotel in Avarua and they were paying the difference. And Anna (Rick’s), who had been holding out for the Maldives next summer, could get choked, likewise Emily (Dennis’s), who had had a temper tantrum on being told, pre-Ascot, that Réunion was completely out of the question with the kids’ school fees costing them a fortune and her bloody unending trips to the bloody hairdresser.

    The visit went very well: two of the suggested sites were excellent, they took lots of snaps, and Rick, whose job entailed that sort of thing, sussed out the exact ownership of the sites and got the owners’ agreement in principle to sell, plus and planning permission, while Dennis, who was more on the concept side, on this occasion the fully organic concept, made quite sure that sufficient materials, builders and foodstuffs were available locally to satisfy the exacting criteria, on the one hand of their top boss, one Sir Maurice Bishop, a terrifying figure to the little people, even though, or perhaps largely because, he usually exuded a sort of gracious bonhomie when socialising with his subordinates at company functions, and on the other hand  of the website which rated ecolodges for their construction, attitude to the environment, organic food, waste disposal and etcetera, and on which Sir Maurice particularly desired YDI’s ecolodges to be awarded four green leaves or—not so bonhomous—he’d know the reason why. Like that.

    And it didn’t hurt at all that the lovely Lalla Holcroft, laughing and protesting that one of the girls’d look much better, had allowed them to take innumerable snaps of her posed in a sarong with a flower behind her ear, variously on tropical beaches with a view of sand, surf and sea, or outlined against the blue Pacific sky or the blue Pacific itself, or in front of enticing coconut and banana palms with enticing fronds of bougainvillea peeping over her entrancing shoulder or, again, embowered by glorious frangipani, the thick creamy flowers, gold-centred, against that glorious honey-tan cheek—quite. Or, as Rick put it, Dennis had better watch himself, or Emily’d be taking him for half his worldly goods plus and maintenance, and if he thought the kids’ school fees were hefty now, just wait until they got to bloody secondary school! Like that, as well.

    Sir Maurice was very pleased with their report—well illustrated as it was, yes—in fact so pleased that he allowed both of them to sit in with the high-ups at the Cook Islands Ecolodge Project Site Finalisation Meeting—YDI went in for those, capital letters and all, everybody circulated with the appropriate memos, emails, and assorted bumf in giant attachments. And even allowed Rick to speak up and give his honest opinion as to which site he preferred. Well, honest as far as it went—there was nothing to choose between the sites but it was pretty clear which one Sir Maurice favoured. And after Sir Maurice had told them all once again that there was no way YDI would even consider paying that damned fellow’s rip-off price for his bloody desert island—Rick and Dennis, neither of whom had suggested that island and neither of whom had, in fact, been asked to look at that island, keeping stumm—it was decided. Site A. And if Dennis, here, recommended—Dennis jumped and reddened—that an agreement with Palmyra Polynesia about access to the hotel’s restaurant and boating facilities for their clients would be advantageous on both sides, then they’d go ahead with it. And as a matter of fact he did know Hiram Ledbetter slightly, so—bonhomous beaming smile—he could assure them there’d be no problem there! No-one would have dared to suggest there might be. In fact most of them were thinking: “One meal at the Old Man’s club oughta do it, and if that doesn’t clinch it, the Royal Enclosure will.”

    “Yes, well,” said Sir Maurice, getting up, “—no, no, don't get up, chaps! The next thing will be the financing, of course. No, well, naturally we’ve got backers lined up!”—jolly laugh—“but it all has to be finalised, eh? Get on to Lloyds, John,” he suddenly ordered, “and make damn’ sure we’ll be covered for damned hurricanes.”

    The said John, an imperturbable character who was head of Development, replied calmly: “Tropical cyclones they call them out there, I believe. I’ll double-check, Maurice.”

    “That’s the stuff! Well, better have Rick and Dennis in on the rest of the meetings, hey? Show you both how it’s done!” he beamed. “No harm in getting your toes wet, at this stage!” With this, exuding bonhomie, he headed for the door, the subordinate gentleman seated nearest to it leaping to his feet and opening it for him.

    In his wake there was a short silence.

    “That was a virtual promotion, you chaps,” drawled the gentleman who had initially been ordered to suss out the Cooks and to whose lot it had fallen to apprise Sir Maurice of (a) the price of that island he fancied, (b) the fact that that island contained nothing but sand and (c) the enormous sum it would cost to get any building materials at all over to that island. “Virtual in the sense of entailing no cash disbursement on Maurice’s part,” he added.

    “Self-evident, Hill!” snapped the young gent who had bowed Sir Maurice out—and who had not, heretofore, uttered a peep.

    “Nevertheless,” said John Banks with his pleasant smile, “entailing considerable kudos. I’ll see you’re both circulated with all the stuff. Oh, there is just one other thing, Rick—”

    “Yes?” said Rick nervously. John Banks was a perfectly pleasant man with no pretension about him, but as head of Development he was a considerable power in the land. Plus and had Sir Maurice’s ear.

    “Exactly why,” said Mr Banks, poker-face, “did your reports entail quite so many pics of that Polynesian lovely?”

    Promptly the gentleman addressed as Hill collapsed in agonised splutters, followed in very short order by the rest of the table.

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” said Rick sheepishly. “Um, she works at Palmyra Polynesia, actually. Head Housekeeper. Well, trouble-shooter when the Yank guests demand something impossible, I think, but it is her job to keep the maids up to the mark. Um, she isn’t Polynesian, as a matter of fact, John, she’s a New Zealander. Um, white New Zealander, I mean.”

    “All the same, I’d put me hand up for managing the project, Hill, if I was you,” said a stout gent from further down the table.

    Hill blew his nose. “No, well, the Auckland office’ll manage it, of course. Might pop out to check up on them, if I’m allowed,” he added, making a face at Mr Banks. “And do us an immense favour, you chaps, and just no-one let on to Maurice that his Polynesian lovely—isn’t!” he howled, breaking down again.

    “He did go on about her, rather, didn’t he?” admitted the gentleman who had got the door.

    “Shut, up, Jody!” he gasped, going into further hysterics.

    Unabashed, Jody informed Mr Banks: “I’ll go out and check up on the project, John, if you like.”

    Mr Banks, who was the project managers’ immediate boss, got up. “I’ll toss a coin for it,” he decided drily, strolling out.

    In his wake the remaining gentlemen, some of whom were definitely old enough to know better, but none of whom were higher in the pecking order than Project Manager, clustered round the table and began eagerly to re-examine the photos of Lalla in her various sarongs. Rather closely. Finally Jody decided that all were good but the one where she was wearing a sarong differently, rather low around the hips, with a shoe-string-strapped bikini top, was the best. No-one, oddly enough, dissenting.

    “I thought,” said Rick uneasily to Hill Tarlington, quite some days later, “that the finance was all fixed up?”

    The project manager eyed him drily. “No, that was just one of Maurice’s little lies, Rick,” he said kindly.

    “Heck! You mean this meeting we have to go to’s about actually getting the backing?” he gasped in horror.

    “Yep. I’d keep me head well down, if I was you!”

    “Yes,” he said faintly. “Will you be there, Hill?”

    “Nope, I’ll be on me project site, far, far away from Maurice’s explosions,” the project manager replied heartlessly, walking off.

    Dennis’s reaction to Rick’s report was a horrified: “Ooh, heck!”

    “Yes,” agreed Rick, looking sick. “Well, um, at least the finance isn’t our job. But we’d better have all the facts and figures at our fingertips, that’s for sure.”

    “In case he asks us!” he agreed. “I know what, I’ll do a list of all the costs of the organic food and stuff, and put it right at the front of my folder!”

    Yeah, well, it couldn’t hurt. But what was the betting that the one thing he asked them about wouldn’t be on the list? Rick tottered off to his office, there to make a list of his own costings. Ugh. He wasn’t a quantity surveyor, why hadn’t they sent one of them out, if they wanted that sort of... Ugh.

    Was it better or worse that the actual meeting was being held at the bankers’ offices rather than at YDI? Rick was blowed if he knew, and he didn’t know anybody to ask. Well, plenty he could ask but none of them would know, either. Hill Tarlington would probably know, not only was he Sir Maurice’s blue-eyed boy, he was from the same sort of family background, in fact YDI gossip maintained a much posher family background, which was why Maurice had taken him on in the first place—not that he hadn’t turned out to be bloody good value, and everybody liked him—but he was safely on his project site.

    “Is this a good sign? Like, that it’s here instead of at the office?” hissed Dennis as they approached Vibart’s Bank.

    “Dunno,” muttered Rick. “Ssh, there they are!”

    “Ooh, heck, are they waiting for us? Ooh, heck!”

    But Sir Maurice, John Banks and assorted stuffed shirts of YDI money men were not in fact waiting for them as such: they were slightly early, they’d lunched at the club and it was just round the corner.

    Right, and they hadn’t just barged in, they’d hung round until the appointed time. This was a Really Bad Sign. Rick could only hope it hadn’t dawned on young Dennis as well, because it’d put him right off his stroke if they did ask him anything.

    It was of course a merchant bank, and Rick hadn’t ever set foot in it before, but it was in an old building which it appeared to own—there were certainly no other brass plates on the door jamb—and it was pretty much as mahogany-panelled and marble-floored as he’d expected, inside. Dennis was looking completely cowed—about as cowed as he felt himself, actually.

    Downstairs there was an old-fashioned desk, very shiny, with an elderly uniformed man behind it, not a superior-looking dollybird, help! Well, maybe he did security for them as well, but ugh. The place screamed “Old money” and “Not about to be taken in by Maurice Bishop’s flimflam.” Not to say: “Ecolodge? What exactly is that?” In the sort of tones an elderly and very crusty judge might use.

    The old-fashioned desk apparently veiled some very up-to-date equipment, because the man pressed a button and an until then invisible wall of bullet-proof glass rose smoothly to allow them access to the lift, which wouldn’t open until the man pressed another button, at which point its old-fashioned wooden doors slid back to reveal a modern steel door, which in its turn slid back to reveal a charmingly old-fashioned lift, carpeted in Persian-patterned Axminster and panelled in mahogany, complete with a hefty uniformed man. Much, much younger than the desk man, with a pistol on his hip. Even Sir Maurice didn’t manage a smile.

    “It’s known as risk minimisation,” said John Banks neutrally to the ambient air three feet from Rick’s head.

    “Um, yes!” he gasped, following him in.

    Upstairs they were shown by a smoothly-smiling secretary or more likely actual PA into a large boardroom. Empty. Sir Peter would be with them in a moment, and would they like coffee, or tea?

    Sir Peter? Did she mean the actual owner? Rick and Dennis exchanged glances of frozen horror, and didn’t dare to utter. They remained mumchance, oblivious alike to Sir Maurice’s condemnation of the mahogany panelling—late Victorian: machine-cut—and the excellence of the coffee.

    Sir Peter Sale was in a very bad mood this afternoon. In fact he had not been in anything that could have been called a good mood for quite some time. At least ten years, actually. Even the knighthood hadn’t put him in a better frame of mind; in fact he’d declared his intention of turning it down, to the horror of his immediate subordinates, who had represented strongly to him that it would only put the wrong backs up and do him personally, Quinn Sale, Vibart’s, and all the Group’s other enterprises no good at all. Peter had retorted sourly that he didn’t give a damn if he personally was never admitted to the Royal Enclosure again, or whatever other piffling nonsense they had in mind—shut up about bloody hunt balls, Jeremy!— likewise Royal garden parties, thank you very much, John—the CEO of Vibart’s Bank and Peter’s faithful PA duly shutting up, though swallowing grins—but he didn’t want to see the Group boycotted in the City, no, so he’d do it. And the first idiot that bowed was out on their ears, get it?

    What was making it worse this particular afternoon was— No, well, several factors, really. The first was that, though Vibart’s Venture Capital Department did have to put money into something, he didn’t think that a wobbly so-called bloody ecolodge in, ye gods and little fishes, the Cook Islands—had any of them ever been there?—was going to bring in a fortune, or even a return. The second was that he knew Maurice Bishop personally and the man was a pompous bore. No, well, good at his job, which largely entailed developing and managing luxury boutique hotels for the sorts of imbeciles who enjoyed six-course so-called cordon bleu meals that at a pinch might rate half a Michelin star, complete with the obligatory massages with scented unguents, optional saunas, tai chis (whatever they were), and assorted supposedly healthful how’s-yer-fathers in amongst the swaddling central heating and the inner-sprung mattresses on the fake four-posters. And yes, John, he had been to one of YDI’s hotels—the Boddiford Hall Park Royal, for his sins—and yes, those fucking four-posters were fake! His PA, of course, had only grinned. These bloody ecolodges were a new bee in Maurice’s bonnet, and the rumour—which apparently had not percolated as far as Vibart’s Venture Capital Department—was that the one in Queensland, Australia, was starting to do reasonably well, in that it was full a large part of the year, only not so much in the hurricane season, which just happened to coincide with the Northern Hemisphere’s winter—so much for escaping from it to a tropical South Seas paradise complete with Aussie service and Aussie laissez-faire, and he had been to Australia, John, remember?—and the one in New Zealand, that was due to open early next year, was slated to go under without ever having recovered its costs, given that only a miniscule proportion of the world’s population even knew where New Zealand was, let alone wanting to go there, let alone being able to afford YDI’s prices.

    Unfortunately Jeremy, who was usually extremely temperate about anything you cared to name, especially putting money into anything without a guaranteed, underwritten five hundred percent return, was unexpectedly keen on this bloody ecolodge scheme. Peter didn’t normally oversee all of Vibart’s Venture Capital boys’ proposals, but there had been one or two recent spectacular flops, so he had decided to monitor them. Not to say, to put the kybosh on the promotion of anything under thirty years of age without a very stable home background to anything like a position of responsibility in regard to the bank’s money. No, Jeremy, he was not harking back to the bad old days when the firm had first taken Vibart’s over and the entire executive staff had to be male, white, gentile, hetero, and safely married to something approved by the age of twenty-five. He didn’t give a damn what their sexual orientation was—or what sex they were, for that matter—but he did require them to be in stable home environments with responsibilities such as kids and mortgages that they had to earn a regular crust for, and not to belong to the coke-snorting, clubbing-till-all-hours fraternity. Fraternity and sorority, these days, he’d added acidly as the unfortunate Jeremy Beech opened his mouth. And just by the by, anybody who even so much as breathed the expression “sub-prime mortgages” was out on their ear. Never mind what the rest of the world might be doing, Jeremy, or the huge fortunes they were making, Vibart’s did not go in for that sort of unsecured bloody gamble! Giving unsecured loans to people who had no hope of repaying them within their lifetimes was bloody stupid, Jeremy! Never mind what the Yanks were doing, in the end the money had to come from somewhere, and shut up about the bloody bank rate, Jeremy, the whole thing was a bubble! And yes, he intended to put the point most forcibly at the next Board of Directors Meeting.

    He had done so, with the expected result: the Board was horrified, Vibart’s had never gone in for that sort of risk! There was even a move to vote the unfortunate Jeremy out, which Peter quashed. He thought hard about it all for some time, and then decided, not to sell out some of his shares in Vibart’s, but to increase his stake. A move which would have horrified his broker, had he but known the reason for it: Peter had decided, with a wry shrug, that if anyone was going to go broke as a result of stupid gambling with the bank’s money, it had better be him.

    This wry shrug had been appearing more and more over the past ten years and, though he was not aware of it, was a considerable factor in his subordinates’ glum opinion that he was a bloody hard man to deal with. Hard in both senses, actually, as Jeremy Beech himself had put it bitterly to his wholly suitable and almost wholly sympathetic spouse after a particularly unfortunate run-in: bloody difficult as well as damned unyielding and unfeeling. Alas, Marian Beech in this instance had merely replied: “That’s enough whisky, you’ll be turning into an alcoholic. He was right, though, wasn’t he?” To which the only possible answers were “Yes,” or a sour glare, so Jeremy awarded her both. Though he did cheer up a lot after the experienced Marian had got a large hot meal down him.

    As Peter had expected, Maurice Bishop had lined up a whole support team this afternoon. He let the bloody man get through the usual spiel, complete with a bloody computer slideshow or whatever the current jargon was, and duly allowed the assembled members of Vibart’s staff to coo over the glossy brochure which Maurice had prepared. At considerable cost, of course: there was a copy for each of them and some left over. Peter didn’t bother to open his, it’d only contain more of the usual flimflam and he was only interested in the hard figures. He even let a sweating little fellow in a zoot-suit, prompted by Maurice, get through a report on the putative costs of organic oranges, etcetera, which YDI proposed sourcing from the local growers. Then he said: “Yes. Who was it, again, who actually spoke to the owners?”

    “Me, sir,” said a slightly older, balder character in another zoot-suit and an unfortunate tie.

    “Good. Then if you wouldn’t mind, explain Polynesian land ownership to us, would you?”

    Gulping, he stumbled through it.

    “Mm,” said Peter in the wake of the stunned silence around Vibart’s conference room table. “That’s about right. Every person in what loosely speaking is translated as the tribe, perhaps more accurately sub-tribe, has rights in the land. There may or may not be what we might recognise as landmarks to indicate the extent of this area of joint possession, and it's more than likely that this area will be disputed.” He paused, and waited for questions.

    After an appreciable silence one of the young men from Vibart’s spoke up. “Sir, does this mean that every member of the, um, sub-tribe has a right, or only every adult member?”

    “Well said,” said Peter very drily indeed. “I don’t know, but I think it’s possibly every member, but they would only have a voice when they come to adulthood—which is possibly the age of initiation and nothing to do with Western norms.”

    “Um, they are all Christian, sir!” gulped the guy who was supposed to have sussed it all out.

    “Yes, very,” put in his friend who had the gen on the oranges, very hoarsely. Not neglecting to go red as the attention of the table became focussed on him. “Congregational.”

    “Then I dare say it’ll be the legal adult age,” said Peter kindly. “I’m sure you did get an agreement in principle to sell from those who claimed to be the owners, but this won’t mean that there may be not be a dispute further down the track.”

    At this point Sir Maurice put in, in the jolly rallying tone he specialised in: “We didn’t have any trouble over the place we bought in New Zealand, Peter, old man!”

    Ten years back Peter Sale might have bothered to propitiate the silly bugger. Now he replied flatly: “That wasn’t Maori land, was it?” and Maurice duly floundered and stuttered and admitted that it wasn’t, no.

    “No. Most of New Zealand has long since been stolen by us British. The people of the Cooks have been luckier. Only the very prime sites on the beachfronts and a few acres of banana plantations are in white hands. –And that American’s island, of course,” he added with a nice smile at the unfortunate chap who hadn’t found out enough about Polynesian land ownership customs—or at least, not enough to shackle his bloody boss.

    “Yes, sir. Um, well, he managed to buy that,” he offered.

    “That’s very true. But as I understand it, Maurice, YDI isn't proposing to buy an island without running water, is it?”

    “No, no, dear boy, wouldn’t dream of it! Not economically viable at all! That place is old Ledbetter’s hobby, y’know: set it up for his daughter and her husband to puddle around in! No, our site’s got excellent access to—” Blah, blah, blah.

    Peter let him run on for a bit and then suggested they go over the figures—not the organic produce crap, thanks, Maurice, the real costings. Just what sort of custom did they envisage getting from the eco-freaks and for what part of the year? Bearing in mind that the Cooks were about as far from the western world, where he presumed Maurice intended sourcing most of his clientèle, as it was possible to be whilst not leaving the planet. Adding: “Just flash that map up again, would you?” to the zoot-suit in charge of the bloody computer that was driving the bloody slideshow. “Not that one,”—as a lovely pictorial map of Rarotonga and its tourist attractions came up—“the map of the Pacific. –Thank you.”

    A certain silence prevailed and then Maurice offered: “Of course we are expecting plenty of Australian custom.”

    Yes, well.

    It was possible—a long way further down the track and barring the odd hurricane, which would put the tourists off, wouldn’t it, even if Maurice’s eco-friendly buildings were put up to withstand Force 5 hurricanes, as he was now claiming they would be?—a long way down the track, then, and barring them, there might be a reasonable return for their money. That was, they might get their money back if all the rooms were filled over the next ten years at X rate indexed to the rate of inflation (Maurice hadn’t specified whose, and Peter didn’t bother to ask if he meant ours or the Cooks’, no-one would get it). But Vibart’s didn’t just want their money back, they wanted a profit on it, and what was more a profit over those ten years! And had Maurice even calculated in the fact that if they were paying Vibart’s back a sum of Y pounds sterling a year this would cut into their expected profit and— Oh, forget it!

    Peter got up. “I’m sorry, Maurice, but no. We can’t offer the venture capital investment you’re asking for. Get some more backers, and get your figures right, and show us a decent profit for our investment, and exactly how and when you propose paying us back both the interest and the capital, and we might look at, say, a million, but I have to say it: unless you can show us some very hard figures on where these so-called eco-clients are going to come from—and why,” he added meanly—“it’s no go.”

    He did keep an office at the bank—just as well, now that he owned two thirds of it, wasn’t it?—so he retreated there and poured himself a brandy: he felt he deserved it.

    Jeremy Beech had come with him. “Sorry, Peter,” he said glumly. “Old Maurice is getting worse. Didn’t think it’d be quite that woolly.”

    “Mm. Needs to promote that chap from his Development side, John Banks, isn’t it? –Yes. And keep his own fingers out of the pie, silly old idiot. I did warn you that the word’s all over the City that these bloody ecolodges are a bee in his bonnet, didn’t I?”

    “Mm. –Thanks,” said Jeremy glumly, accepting a brandy and sinking into an armchair.

    Peter sat down on the sofa and sipped his own brandy slowly. “What he needs to do is go into a joint venture arrangement with one or two of these firms that specialise in the daft organic stuff—not just produce as such, but organically grown all-natural cotton how’s-yer-fathers and fabric woven from God-knows-what unlikely organic source—amaranth or soy fibre or some such!”

    “Amaranth?” echoed John very weakly indeed.

    Peter grinned at him. “Flight literature. Desperately seeking reading matter. No, they eat it, actually. The grain and the leaves.”

    God, the man had a mind like an encyclopaedia and what was more, he never forgot a thing! As witness his remembering Maurice Bishop’s offsider’s name. Jeremy smiled weakly. “I see. Um, well, you know him personally, Peter, I don’t. Why don’t you suggest it?”

    “He’d think we were interested in his bloody ecolodges after all, you moron,” he groaned.

    Jeremy raised an eyebrow at him. “And we’re definitely not?”

    “We-ell... Some really hard figures, some signed-up partners, and maybe. Up to a mill’, anyway. But on the whole I’d rather not. You’ll notice he didn’t spell out precisely why the Gano Group isn’t putting their own yen into these damned ecolodges.”

    “Uh—God.”

    Peter sipped brandy. “Quite.”

    Jeremy picked up the copy of Maurice’s shiny brochure that Peter had chucked on the coffee table and began slowly flipping through it, smiling to himself. “As a matter of fact, Marian’d probably fancy a holiday at this sort of place. She was saying just the other day that the sort of ostentatious consumerism that the usual holiday destinations go in for is damned sickening.”

    “As opposed to Maurice’s unostentatious consumerism?” returned Peter acidly.

    “Mm, exactly!” He turned over. “Cor!” he spluttered. “I think Jimmy might fancy it even more!”

    Jimmy was the youngest Beech offspring: he’d be about twenty-two. “Oh?” said Peter with a smile.

    John passed the brochure over, grinning. “That! In fact, them two!”

    Tolerantly Peter glanced at it, prepared to profess light amusement. “Jesus!” he gasped.

    “What is it?” said Jeremy in alarm—he’d gone a nasty shade of green. “Not a tooth?”

    Peter’s nostrils flared. He took a deep breath. “No.” The glossy full-page photo showed Lalla Holcroft, smiling, posed in a skimpy bright pink bikini top which was decent, just, but manifestly not holding them up, and a low-slung, brightly-printed floral-on-white sarong, posed amidst a welter of tropical blooms. With a huge pink hibiscus behind her ear.

    “Have they gone?” he said tightly.

    “Uh—old Maurice’s lot? Yes, young Freddy showed them out. What in Hell’s the matter, Peter?”

    “Get hold of— No, I’ll get John onto it. JOHN!” he shouted. “Get in here!”

    His PA appeared from the outer office forthwith. “Something wrong, Peter?”

    “Y— Not exactly. Look, excuse us, would you, Jeremy? Nothing to do with business: it—it’s personal,” he ended in a voice that shook a little.

    Mentally raising his eyebrows very high, Jeremy obligingly went out. Asking himself when, exactly, Peter Sale had ever been to the Cook Islands?

    “What’s up?” said John Faraday bluntly to his employer.

    “I—” Peter swallowed and passed his hand over his hair. “Sit down, John. Um, cast your mind back ten years, would you? Hang on, no, it’d be eleven next February.”

    “Yes?” replied John calmly, sitting down.

    “I was in Australia.”

    “I remember: Canberra, and then there was that accident at—”

    “Yes. Not that. It’s her,” said Peter tightly, shoving the brochure at him.

    John looked blankly at a publicity snap of a bronzed lovely posed amongst tropical blooms, not revealing that his mother, who was now living in New Zealand in a retirement flat in a very pleasant complex, had reported bitterly that her hibiscus’s flowers, though pretty, were often full of ants, and only lasted a day if you brought them inside. “Who?”

    “Lalla,” said Peter bleakly. He swallowed hard.

    “Omigod,” gulped John as it all came back to him. There had been the most tremendous kerfuffle in the wake of his damned fling with the girl! Peter had gone frantic when she disappeared, insisting John fly out there himself and that he track down all the Holcrofts in Sydney and then when that was N.B.G., all the Holcrofts in Australia. To no effect: Lalla Holcroft, if that ever had been her name, had disappeared into the wild blue yonder. John in person had eventually got chapter and verse out of the bloody Sydney office and worked out that she hadn’t been their Miss Holcroft at all: he’d forced them to track her down and it was obvious it wasn’t her, but just in case he’d had her picture emailed to Peter and had received a very angry response indeed: evidently his Lalla was NOT a lipsticked tart! Never mind Miss Joanne Holcroft’s weepings and wailings and gnashings of the too-large teeth and swearing that she honest-er-lee-ee didn’t know anythink about it, John’s private opinion was that, having chickened out herself, she’d passed the job on to a pal and the both of them had decided to keep stumm about it. It had seemed slightly odd that the pal didn’t then come forward with the prospect of a slice of Peter Sale’s moolah gleaming in her eye, but as John Faraday didn’t want Peter to get involved with a gold-digging, common little Australian tart, he didn't make this point to him. According to Bernie Carpenter of QSMME she had been a dinky-die Kiwi (or possibly dinky-dye: John had never heard the expression before and he hadn’t entirely believed it then), so it was just on the cards that she’d packed up and gone home to New Zealand, though Peter seemed convinced she lived in Sydney.

    John hadn’t put this point to Peter, either, but unfortunately he’d thought of it for himself and insisted John phone all the Holcrofts in New Zealand. This had resulted in an awful lot of polite declarations that they were sorry but they didn't know a Lalla Holcroft, with quite a lot of “What did you says”? as to the first name, one delighted “Ooh, isn’t that pretty! I’ll tell Jim when he gets home, it’d be lovely for the baby, I think it’s much prettier than Violet, don’t you? Um, sorry, but it’s not our family,” several wrong numbers, with or without vague recollections that that might’ve been the people that had had the number before them, one dry-cleaning establishment, and one “Who did you say you are? –Who? –Enquiring about what? –Canberra? Listen to me, young man, I don’t care who you work for, we don’t answer phone questionnaires in this house!” Slam! John had tried again, with grovelling apologies, but had got nothing out of the woman but “No. Nothing to do with us.” Slam! Subsequently, at Peter’s insistence, he’d got a couple of firms of private detectives onto it—one in Australia, one in New Zealand—but they’d got the same zero result. Well, realistically all they’d have done would have been ring the names in the telephone directory, too, wouldn’t it? John hadn’t pointed this out to his employer, he was praying that he’d give up: Peter was wasting his energy on this rubbish when he ought to be concentrating on business. The thing was pointless: for whatever reason, the girl clearly didn’t want to be found, and, once again, it was ninety to one that her name was not Holcroft at all. And no—wearily—he’d tried all the Holcrofts in Canberra personally, Peter, and none of them were related. Yes, he knew she’d said she had relations there, but had that even been their surname? He couldn’t remember. Quite.

    Now John risked a look at his employer’s face. Oh, Christ. “Are you sure it’s her?” he said weakly.

    “Yes. Book me on a flight.”

    Oh, shit! “Peter, it was more than ten years back, she might be married or anything by now!”

    “Get me on a FLIGHT!” he shouted.

    “You’ll have to go to New Zealand; Auckland, I think, and change planes, I’m pretty sure there are no direct—”

    “YES! DO IT!”

    Okay, he’d do it, and when the man found out that she was married or otherwise involved with someone else, or that she’d been sleeping with half the South Pacific—which by the look of her in that skimpy bikini top was more than likely—that’d be an end of the bloody thing once and for all, wouldn’t it?

    Funnily enough the flights to New Zealand from London weren’t booked out in a freezing-cold November, even though it’d be the beginning of their summer, so John couldn’t give that as an excuse. He got Peter onto a direct flight to Auckland, warned him it’d be damned uncomfortable not breaking the journey, warned him there was no guarantee that in fact the journey would not be broken at, he could take his pick, anywhere from Paris to Sydney via Bahrain, Mumbai, Calcutta, Hong Kong and/or Singapore, and Darwin. And here were some sleeping pills and for God’s sake take them, or he’d be a wreck by the time he got there: it’d take a whole day, that was, twenty-four hours, remember. And, by the by, although the airline had sworn otherwise, it was Lombard Street to a China orange the bloody plane would stop at Sydney and not to get off there. And that he was ticketed through to Rarotonga, but there was no hope whatsoever that the plane’d make an earlier connection, and even if it was on time he’d have to make an overnight stay in Auckland. And remember there was always an agriculture inspection as well as Customs in Australia and New Zealand.

    To all of which Peter merely responded with a vague smile and a vague: “Thanks awfully, John, you’re a brick.”

    Oh, God.

Next chapter:

https://thelallaeffect.blogspot.com/2024/01/paradise-revisited.html