Over the Donkey’s Back.
Woman chairman fights to save her company, her marriage and her children’s inheritance.
‘Under the Devil’s Belly’ Sequel
By
Peter G Bailey
Smashwords Edition
Published by:
Peter G Bailey at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 by Peter G Bailey ©
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First published in Great Britain by PG Publishing
First published electronically in Great Britain by Amazon in 2011.
All characters in this book are fictitious and bear no relationship to any person, alive or dead, known to the author.
A catalogue record for all published eBooks is held in the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-9569572-9-0
To sweet Joy who deserves to reap all she sows.
Two line synopsis:-
When her deposed predecessor returns to visit Barbara Simmonds-Hunter finds her world turned upside down. Not only does she face horrendous business challenges; she finds her personal, domestic and social life affected in a way she could not foresee.
Dustcover synopsis:-
Lady Barbara Simmonds-Hunter seemed to have everything, a successful marriage to a man she adored, a boisterous stepson and two fine children of her own. At work, she chairs a profitable insurance company that gives her time to indulge in a little commercial intrigue, and she has close, loving friends. At home she lives a life of ease in Durmoor Manor, her husband’s Somerset estate, or she lives in one of two penthouses. For travel she has a choice of several Rolls Royces and a private helicopter. Lady Barbara is rich, beautiful and hard.
Until Moris Dickey drifts back into her life she had only one worry, a delinquent stepson with a murderous penchant for trying to eliminate her two children, and an evil disposition for causing mindless trouble.
Moris Dickey, a financial ne’er-do-well, with a persuasive tongue and the dreams of ten empire building Cecil Rhodes’, changes all that. He turns her world upside down in an attempt to satisfy his own thirst for revenge and to gain personal success in an area where he was banned from operating for ten years. But is he after her, or is he working from his own agenda? Barbara lives through one crisis after another. Her husband and stepson die in a skiing accident and she almost loses the chairmanship of her expanded insurance company. Her misery continues when she discovers her dear friend Linda has given birth to a female child bearing all the unlovely characteristics of her dead unlamented stepson.
Contents:-
Chapter One – In Came the Fiddler
Chapter Two - Durmoor
Chapter Three – Child of Misery
Chapter Four – The Fiddler baits the trap
Chapter Five – The First Bite
Chapter Six – The Merger
Chapter Seven – Truth or Fiction
Chapter Eight – Plots and Counter Plots
Chapter Nine – The Struggle for the Chair
Chapter Ten – Tommy Takes a Hand
Chapter Eleven – Life Goes On
Chapter Twelve – The Fiddler Calls the Tune.
Chapter One
In Came a Fiddler.
Caught in the act of withdrawing a folder from her confidential filing cabinet Rachel Wellborn stopped moving and froze as two male hands slipped under her arms from behind and cupped her breasts. The shock of finding herself thus pinioned against the cabinet was even more profound because no one was in the office when she rose from her desk to walk the few paces to one of the many filing cabinets lining the glass walls of her better than modestly equipped office. There was no fear in her heart, why should there be? She only had to scream and fifty staff, male and female, would rush to her aid.
Unperturbed by the assault, she calmly extracted the file she needed before closing the drawing firmly on the remainder, whatever her attacker had in mind for her body, they were classified documents and should not be read by her unseen impertinent groper, whoever it might be. Then, holding the manila folder lightly in her fingers as a modesty shield she leaned into her assailant and pushed herself away from the cabinets.
‘I would know that grip anywhere,’ she chuckled self-consciously. ‘Those hands could only belong to one man.’ She twisted round in the loosened grip and stepped lightly to one side to face her assailant. ‘I thought so, Moris Dickey,’ she said, a slight smile of disapproval playing around the prim, painted lips. Not everyone would want to molest Miss Rachel Wellborn during daylight hours. She was physically attractive enough if well beyond an age when she might expect such cavalier treatment at her place of work, but the professional set of her features and her outward display of stern propriety warned any but the most adventurous males to stay well clear and Sapphic interests were non-existent. The impossibility of achieving either recreational exercise made her seem aloof and inclined towards the frigid, a state of mind she readily conceded. Rachel Wellborn was the original asexual woman interested only in work and in serving her employer’s secretarial needs. Social classifications bothered her not one bit, especially as no one was brave enough to discuss her character shortcomings to her face.
‘You mean no one’s molested you since I left?’ The owner of the wayward hands and the suggestive name marvelled in mock wonder. Tall, slender, superbly dressed in a dark city suit Moris Dickey looked a prosperous, important fortysomething success in whatever dubious pursuit he followed, and some of those might not survive the bright light of revelation being shone of them. ‘Shame on them. Have they no taste? I can’t believe that of anyone working in the insurance business unless they’ve been sitting on their balls for too long.’
‘No, I don’t mean that, at all, and kindly watch your foul mouth in this office, if you please,’ she retorted crossly, but without rancour. ‘I mean, everyone reads the Sexual Harassment Laws these days and keeps their hands and suggestive comments to themselves, perhaps you should also take note of their contents.’
‘Read them,’ Dickey admitted dismissively as he lowered his hands and stood aside to let her return to her cluttered desk where enough scattered paper showed she was busily occupied, but not enough to suggest inefficiency, which she definitely was not. ‘They’re not much fun and the plot’s lousy,’ he continued jocaciously. ‘Any punch line advocating that a bloke keeps his hands and comments under control doesn’t get my vote for the Booker Award.’
‘How did you get in here anyway?’ Rachel demanded, changing the subject and ignoring his evasive comments while indignantly shuffling papers on her desk. She needed time to collect her scattered wits and compose her normally calm exterior. She should be angry at such impertinent treatment, especially from someone she had not seen for many years, but pleasure overcame her feelings of personal indignation. ‘We have security guards posted to prevent time-wasting vagrants entering company property and attacking nice girls trying to work.’
‘Not any girls,’ Dickey protested with a disarming grin. ‘Only those with a nice handful.’ He raised his hands to chest level again and flexed his fingers suggestively.
‘Now you stop that,’ Rachel demanded with an outraged flap of her free hand in the direction of the Dickey chest. ‘What are you here for anyway? I’m sure you wouldn’t drive all the way from your Berkshire stud farm just to give yourself a cheap thrill attacking unsuspecting ladies in their office.’
‘Don’t be too sure about that, young lady! When you reach my age one has to take what’s on offer; besides it’s a rare cattle breeding station, not a stud farm.’
‘Nothing was on offer, you cheeky devil.’ Rachel glared at him with mock ferocity, but the smile remained on her lips and the glad sparkle stayed in her dark, sharp eyes. ‘What do you want anyway? I don’t have all day.’
Dickey smiled and looked around the office as though familiarising himself with a room he had not seen for a very long time. ‘Apart from the pleasure of looking into your attractive eyes and getting to grips with the local attractions again I want to see Lady Barbara.’
‘No chance,’ Rachel cut in firmly. ‘Her diary is so full between now and the millennium you couldn’t squeeze a paperclip between appointments.’ She pulled a single-sheet desk engagement diary towards her, but did not lower her gaze to glance at any of the many entries. There was no need; she knew them all by heart for many days ahead, if not well into any defined time scale.
From his side of the desk Dickey could see most time slots for that day were indeed full and he guessed the same would be true for any of the following days. They certainly were during his tenure in the chair now occupied by the glamorous Lady Barbara Simmonds-Hunter. ‘I could fit you in sometime in the year two thousand and fifteen if there’s a cancellation, but then I’m not sure her Ladyship would want to see you even then. You left her an awful lot of problems to sort out when you handed over the chairmanship of the Fidelity Mutual Assurance Group, and your dubious financial marketing activities since haven’t helped.’
‘That’s what I want to talk to her about,’ Dickey explained soothingly. ‘I promised to keep out of the insurance business for ten years and that’s long gone.’
‘You mean you want Lady Barbara to move over to let you back in?’ Rachel gasped incredulously. ‘A lot of people would have things to say about that, including me.’
Dickey looked at her with regretful disapproval. ‘Whatever happened to trust and personal loyalty?’ he sighed. ‘I once trusted you with my financial life, remember? You knew all my innermost secrets, or most of them, the ones I could safely share with the vicar, that is.’
‘That was ten years ago, Mr Dickey and you never asked me to join you in the wilderness, did you?’ Rachel regarded him with mild disapproval as she tried to make up her mind how she should treat him without a lead from her employer, a woman who might not be enchanted to see her old employer back on the premises she banned him from. ‘In fact you didn’t even say good-bye. You left in mid-sentence as I was taking down your dictation, so to speak. I’ve probably still got the letter framed for posterity somewhere; the last words of a rat scuttling to safety leaving the girls with the dust pans and brushes to clear up the mess.’
‘Would you have joined me?’ Dickey asked with a wry grin. He glanced through the glass partition into the next office where he could see a dark haired woman sitting attentively behind a huge polished wooden desk talking to three business-suited men. The meeting looked as though it had been going on for some time and it showed no signs of coming to the early conclusion he might have wished. ‘Who are those guys?’ he asked. There was no point rehashing history. He had not asked and she did not join him.
Rachel tossed her head defiantly. ‘Never you mind. You shouldn’t be spying in here anyway.’ She pushed the engagement’s diary to one side and purposefully picked up the folder extracted from the filing cabinet. She should be working on the details her chairman wanted for her next meeting not wasting time talking to someone who should not be in her office anyway. ‘I might have joined you,’ she admitted reopening his first question and refusing the identification request. ‘I wasn’t keen on working for a woman at the time, but now you couldn’t drag me away for twice the pay and a whole hatful of corporate perks, including the directors’ dining room. Lady Barbara is the best boss anyone could work for and I’d die for her.’
‘Better than me?’ Dickey wheedled. ‘I fixed you up with a decent car parking space, remember, just so you wouldn’t get your hair blown into ruins before reaching your office, and I provided you with your own personal computer, the first one in the company if you remember.’
‘Sure, you were fair enough in most things, but Lady Barbara doesn’t fondle her secretaries behind the filing cabinets.’
‘But I didn’t charge you for that perk, did I?’ Dickey reminded her condescendingly. ‘Anyway, I know one of the guys in there, that’s John Dacre, her smartarse accountant, isn’t it?’
‘As a matter of fact it is, and the meeting is likely to go on for some time so if you’ll leave your name and telephone number at reception desk someone will contact you in a day or two if the chairman wants to see you.’ Rachel grinned roguishly. ‘But don’t hold your waistline in. Whatever Lady Barbara wants to say to you, she could probably say using two fingers and a few well-chosen words if she wasn’t such a lady. I might even enjoy saying them myself because I’m no lady where you are concerned.’
‘Oh dear,’ Dickey muttered with disapproving sadness. ‘And all those Christmas and birthday cards I sent her over the years. I even send cards to her children...’
‘Mr Dickey, I see you’re still full of heart and smarmy charm, but there’s still no chance of seeing the chairman without an appointment, and when you consider how few Christmas and birthday cards I received from you over the same timescale you’ll understand the likelihood of getting to see Lady Barbara this side of the year two thousand and fifteen is practicably negligible.’
‘Okay, let’s try another tack,’ Dickey suggested amiably. He was never one to be put off by negative responses to his pleas. ‘Let’s say Lady Barbara will be pleased to see me for reasons I need not discuss with you.’
‘And she’ll do it with about the same enthusiasm as she receives her income tax demands no doubt,’ Rachel scoffed. She enjoyed fencing exchanges with the magnetic Moris Dickey and always had, although she was a little less sharp with her repartee when he employed her. Now she had no time to banter, but she knew Barbara would go ballistic if she discovered Dickey had dropped in and had left without seeing her. Moris Dickey had been the greatest influence in her life and was the foundation of her fortune. She would want to meet the resurrected Mr Dickey.
Rachel looked at him thoughtfully. Should she offer him a seat, or would that encourage him to remain longer? Every minute spent talking to him wasted time and that commodity was always in short supply around the mercurial Lady Barbara.
‘Take a seat and convince me,’ she relented at last. ‘I should tell you though, Lady Barbara will not be interested in any of your dubious business propositions, and if you want her to act for you personally, she no longer has private clients.’
Dickey pulled a grey uncut maquette covered stainless steel framed seat from its position by the door and placed it companionably by Rachel’s desk. He was prepared to wait.
Outside the office workers hurried by the glass partition wall as they went about their business, some looked in curiously. This was where things happened that affected their lives, but most hurried by, urged on by their own pressing concerns. A few even took a second glance at Rachel’s guest as though recognising a face once familiar to them and being surprised to see it in Rachel Wellborn’s office of all places. Apart from blinking disbelievingly they too hurried on, although it was noticeable that several returned with eyewitnesses to prove their original observation was not delusional. Their one-time charismatic chairman and the driving force behind the Temple Pass Independent Insurance Agency was back in the building he acquired when taking over the ‘Fidelity and Mutual’ Insurance Company. What could that mean?
Seeing the attention he was attracting Dickey smiled to himself as he considered his response to Rachel’s question. He had not asked for an appointment to see her titled boss because he suspected it would be refused, not from personal rudeness, but because the, the insurance company the Fidelity Mutual placed much of their independent business with, had declared him persona non grata ten years earlier and they had long and vindictive memories.
‘Hey! I have insurance cover coming out of my ears and all of it with this company. I started this gig, remember?’
Rachel nodded grimly. ‘I also remember you nearly ruined it too.’
Dickey grinned as he sat down. ‘You must tell me your version of that fairy-tale sometime, although I probable know it by heart. What was it? Criminal connections, money laundering for drug barons. Blimey girl, I wish I’d made half the dosh those stories put me down for.’
‘Ah! You’re running out of piggy bank money and you want Barbara to run a scam for you?’ Rachel interrupted him.
‘Well yeah, I am down to my last few million pounds; come to think of it. You know how it is when you’re rich, a hundred thousand here and a hundred thousand there, it soon goes.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Rachel murmured sarcastically. Letters and papers dealing with sums of money with many noughts after the first significant integer floated across her desk daily, but none of it stuck long enough to find its way into her own modest bank account. She wished it would, but it had not happened. ‘Still, you were always a flash git with money. What did you use to tell me?’ she mimicked. ‘I owe it to my fans, Rachel. They should see that I’m as rich as double cream and as successful as the team leading the first division football league, and I started where they are, on the door knocker and on the telephone, with wet feet and raw knuckles.’
‘That’s still good advice for anyone wanting to make it big in the insurance game,’ Dickey agreed affably. If he was offended by her bad mimicry of one of his many sermons he did not show it. ‘Everyone needs targets and what better target than trying to emulate the lifestyle of some flash git with money to spend on fast cars, big houses and supersonic women.’ He half-grinned to himself. ‘Pity I was married at the time, or I could have thrown fast women into the advice. The consultants would have loved that, the blokes anyway, although some of the female consultants might have been interested, as I remember.’
‘You fancied Barbara yourself once, didn’t you?’ Rachel asked coyly. ‘Everyone seems to fancy her.’
‘Barbara?’ Dickey repeated as though the thought was new to him. He turned his head slightly to look through the glass wall at the titled lady sitting, talking and listening to the men around her desk. ‘Didn’t have time for such interesting thoughts in those days,’ he sighed. ‘Not that a grope in the clover was ever offered. In those days it was all drive, drive, drive, money, money, money. Sex was an out of hour’s activity and if Barbara was in Bristol and I was in London married to Tamara there was no chance of a quick leg over was there? Tamara would have scratched my eyes out, and she threatened that on more than one occasion, even though I was as innocent as a new born lamb.’
Rachel shook her head wonderingly. ‘I feel real sorry for you guys. You have it real rough getting by in this world without us women to hold your hands and wipe your noses.’ Her tone was cynical and unforgiving. ‘Anyway!’ She regarded him severely across the width of her desk. ‘I hope you’re not keeping me here chatting until the meeting breaks up hoping to slip in like an unwelcome cockroach?’
‘I can’t remember you were ever this hard to deal with,’ Dickey sighed theatrically.
‘Oh! Believe me, I was!’ Rachel assured him firmly. ‘Why do you think everyone hated me and called me those outrageous names if it wasn’t to protect you?’
‘Yes, I guess you’re right,’ Dickey agreed with a modest, self-effacing smile. There was no point picking a fight with the casehardened Rachel Wellborn until he got what he wanted, even then he would be on dangerous grounds. He knew she could be obstinate and unyielding from his own bitter experience. When she worked for him, all those years ago, he only had to tell her once that he was not to be disturbed and the 7th Armoured Corps, in full battle mode would not have gained entry to his office. He grinned ruefully to himself. If Rachel did not want him to see Lady Barbara he would not do it through her office.
‘What did they call me?’ she asked. Suddenly there was no humour in her brown serious eyes. What people called her hard-nosed attitude she liked to think of as pragmatism and office efficiency. She liked to think she worked hard for the good of her employer and it hurt to think others did not share that selfless virtue.
Dickey looked at her knowing he trod on dangerous ground if he wanted favours from her.
‘It was a long time ago,’ he protested weakly. He knew well enough what the staff called her, even what he himself called her in moments of annoyance and ripe humour, but he was not about to commit suicide by revealing those dark secrets. ‘Nothing derogatory, I assure you,’ he lied.
Rachel looked at him suspiciously. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now I pull the levers.’
‘Then you’ll pull one or two for me...’
‘I didn’t say that.’ Rachel stopped speaking as she saw her tormentor’s attention drift to the people in the main office again.
‘I know the other guy,’ Dickey interposed. ‘Isn’t that Philip Chalmers, the sewer runt?’
‘He’s a board member, if that’s what you mean? Not one of ours,’ Rachel corrected him airily. ‘He represents a number of shareholding consortia, I believe.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Dickey agreed as enlightening thoughts flooded back into his mind from the past. ‘Didn’t I read that he was trying to unseat the chairman of the Globe and Compass, Martin Dempsey? Something about old Dempsey trying to insinuate his son into the chair when he retires?’
‘There’s some discussion about the son not being a patch on his father and not being worth his place anywhere in the company, let alone the board,’ Rachel confirmed with a shrug of elegantly dressed shoulders. ‘But that’s common gossip all over the financial press so I’m not breaching any company confidentiality there,’ she hastened to add in case Dickey thought her indiscreet in adding to the gossip. ‘But then you knew Martin Dempsey very well, didn’t you?’
‘Still do,’ Dickey confessed sourly. ‘We still nod across a crowded room, but after he elbowed me off the Fidelity board, things were never the same, we definitely don’t send each other birthday cards.’
‘I wonder why?’ Rachel murmured.
Dickey grinned. ‘I suppose I should keep my mouth shut since he’s still in the chair while I’m knocking on my old boardroom door waiting to see the woman who replaced me.’
‘You’re not even close enough to reach the doorknocker, Mr Dickey. I told you there’s no chance.’
‘Not even if what I had to say was relevant to what they might be discussing?’
‘You’ve been out of the insurance business for ten years, what information could you have that would interest Lady Barbara?’
‘We’ll never know unless I get to see her privately...’
Rachel smiled sweetly. ‘Nice try, Mr Dickey, but the answer is still no.’
‘How about a coffee while I wait then?’ Dickey suggested. ‘I remember you served it in sweet china cups.’ Without thinking Rachel pressed a small button on her desk intercom set and ordered the drinks when a sweet voiced female enquired how she could be of service. Rachel was sufficiently important in the company to have her own secretary and typist.
‘I only made coffee for you and Andrew Hunt, never for that dreadful Frank Hawkins.’
‘Frank still works for me, you know?’ Dickey informed her defensively. ‘He hasn’t changed much, still swears a lot and he’s still not fully house-trained...’
‘I’m really not interested in his well-being,’ Rachel retorted with a theatrical shiver. ‘Memories of that uncouth lout still send shudders down my spine and disturb my sleep at night.’ She looked at Dickey speculatively. ‘There’s no chance of him returning to the FMA if you get your old job back, is there?’
Dickey shrugged. ‘Who knows what the future holds for us all.’ He grinned mischievously. ‘Frank was misunderstood by nearly everyone. He’s a damned hard worker and a good organiser, the best. Without him Temple Pass and the FMA deal would never have got off the ground and you wouldn’t be standing there obstructing me from getting on with my business.’
‘You’re not really trying to come back?’ Rachel demanded weakly. ‘Although how you kept from interfering here for ten years, I’ll never know.’
‘The threat of a long stretch in jail was inducement enough for that forbearance, believe me,’ Dickey responded feelingly. ‘And for that gap in my life I have nothing to thank Martin Dempsey for.’
A few minutes later the coffee arrived on a sterling silver tray in a tastefully floral porcelain jug carried by a smartly suited young lady with bobbed hair and a white throat cravat. She placed the tray on the corner of the desk and set out two small matching floral china coffee cups. With quick unsmiling movements the coffee was poured and handed to the two silent desk occupants. After a nod of dismissal from Rachel the bearer departed as discreetly as she had arrived, no fuss, no comments and no interruption of the work that should have been taking place.
Rachel had kept up her prissy feminine standards after all this time Dickey noted approvingly, but then Lady Barbara would not allow her to lower them if she had anything to say on the subject. Looking reproachfully into his old office he could see that too had been feminised much as her old Bristol office had been. Gentle landscape pictures adorned the walls in place of the brash masculine hunting scenes of his choice, and everywhere bowls of fresh cut flowers and potted plants festooned the room in attractive displays where there had once been nothing but bare surfaces. All the extra ornamentation and fresh green vegetation set the working space for someone as beautiful as the current occupant of the company chair.
Rachel scowled peevishly at the arrival of the coffee, but she said nothing. She hardly remembered ordering it with a mind confused by the many convoluted thoughts spinning through a mental space that should have been filled with orderly thoughts and clinical decisions. Dickey’s unscheduled appearance in her office had upset her routine, not so much by his presence, attractive as that was, but what the presence meant. He had always been an exciting man who made things happen and his electric personality stirred people into increased activity even though they might not work for him. In persuasive mode there was nothing people would not do for him. Even Barbara had fallen under his spell on more than one occasion when she should have stood back and demurred, and there was no one more cynical than a doubtful Barbara.
‘Coffee?’ she offered unnecessarily as Dickey reached forward and lifted a brimming cup from the desk surface nearest him. In the old days the cup would have been placed beside his elbow, by Rachel herself, along with a stream of new messages that had arrived since they last spoke, now Rachel silently wondered what to do about the impressive man before her: wait or try to get rid of him before Barbara became free.
She did not have long to wonder. A soft buzzing sound issued from the intercom set lying by her left elbow. It made an unobtrusive sound, one designed not to alarm or startle, almost apologetic.
Caught in the act of raising the cup to her lips Rachel straightened and looked into the main office where movement was taking place. One of the men was preparing to leave. Replacing her cup in its saucer Rachel stood up and hurried to the interconnecting door just in time to intercept the departee with a bright smile and a secret enquiring glance at her chairman. There might be instructions to pass on.
When Rachel stood up Dickey also rose to his feet and followed her to where Lady Barbara stood just inside her office saying a few valedictory words. A look of blank surprise passed over her face as she saw who waited in the outer office; nevertheless she followed Rachel and her departing guest out of the main office with welcoming smile intact.
‘Moris, darling,’ she breathed doubtfully. ‘How did you get in? I thought the security staff had a shoot to kill policy if you appeared within a hundred miles of this place.’
‘I still know a few people around here,’ Dickey laughed as he took her in his arms and kissed her on both cheeks. They had reached that degree of familiarity many years earlier and might have gone beyond that had they not been separated by half the West Country and a possessive wife, and in her case a husband who looked capable of defending his interests.
‘You’ll have to give me their names, I thought we’d fired everyone who knew you by name, sight or association,’ Barbara said standing back and regarding him approvingly. ‘I see ranching has not put much weight on your waistline, you look as delicious as you always did.’
‘Hey, I do my ranching, as you call it, from the inside of a computer, and then it’s only moving sperm banks around to make the cows happy,’ Dickey protested smilingly.
‘You’ll like doing that...’
‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘But I still haven’t succeeded in breeding anything as lovely as you.’
‘You’re comparing me to an old cow?’ Barbara protested mockingly. ‘How flattering, Moris. You could do better than that once. Perhaps you’ve been amongst the bovines too long and you’ve picked up some of that spongiform encephalitis or whatever’s rotting your finer instincts.’
‘Don’t underrate yourself, doll, some of those cows are unbelievably pretty and pricey.’
‘Ah! Now I know you’ve been too long in places where you shouldn’t be. Cows are shaped a little different to us girls, or hadn’t you noticed.’
‘I said I hadn’t succeeded,’ he protested.
Dickey paused to admire the slim woman before him and he had to admit she had changed little since he last saw her in that very office all those years ago. Then she had been complaining bitterly about how badly the board members of the ‘Globe and Compass’ were treating her as his nominee on their board. In fact, the object of her particular hate at the time was one of the men sitting at her desk now, Philip Chalmers.
‘Is this a social visit, Moris, because I’m rather busy just at the moment?’ Barbara glanced enquiringly at Rachel as her secretary flustered back to her employer’s side after seeing her guest off the premises, or at least, out of the office and into the corridor.
‘I told him that, Miss Schofield,’ Rachel began.
Dickey raised his eyebrows. ‘Miss Schofield?’ he repeated.
Barbara flicked her hands in a characteristic gesture of impatience at having to make the same explanation many times. ‘It’s my business non de plume,’ she explained when Dickey blinked at the change of formal address. ‘Saves all the ‘My Lady’ stuff and the knee bending grovelling. I couldn’t keep up with Rachel’s stocking bill the first few weeks I was here.’ She smiled brightly at the sober faced Rachel standing beside them. ‘Now we get along fine as just Miss Schofield, or better still, Barbara. That way I can forget the mother hen bit for a few hours.’
Dickey smiled indulgently as he remembered his own modest south London cockney roots and how far he had come since those freewheeling days. In that respect Barbara was the same as she had always been. Even when engaged to her present husband’s father, the Earl of Trentmarsh, she had never shown any liking for the grandeur the noble marriage had brought her. That common touch characteristic was just as well in the company when Dickey ruled, because, with his louche upbringing, he was deferential to no one, let alone one of his employees who had made good at his expense and had married into the aristocracy into the bargain.
‘I’m glad to hear that, My Lady, because my tailor would go mad if I returned his suits with baggy knees.’ Dickey glanced into the main office with its curious occupants staring outwards to see who had engaged their hostess’s attention so comprehensively at their expense. Barbara herself was plainly keen to return to her interrupted conversation with them.
‘You have some money belonging to me,’ he concluded bluntly.
The introduction of money as a topic of conversation should not have surprised Barbara as much as it did. She spent her days talking of nothing else, how to save it, how to invest it and how to spend it wisely without attracting too many tax liabilities. She had been successful at that career for other people and she had been successful in making herself immensely rich at the same time, now she shook her dark head disbelievingly.
‘Run that by me again?’ she demanded. ‘I have money belonging to you?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Dickey went on cheerfully. ‘When I left the ‘Fidelity and Mutual’ I was investing in an off shore tax-free fund, but never got around to specifying which fund, and at the time, the money seemed safer in your hands than in my bank risking sequestration.’
A puzzled look came over Barbara’s smooth forehead. ‘A sum of money,’ she repeated uncertainly. ‘It would have a handle, this money, would it? And how much are we talking about?’
‘Yes. This pot belongs to Moris Ulysses Dickey, himself. It’s mine and I can prove it.’ He allowed his face to become serious as he looked into Barbara’s green puzzled eyes. ‘We’re talking about fifteen million pounds, plus ten years’ worth of aggregated interest,’ he concluded firmly.
Barbara winced and lowered her eyes as though disappointed by the realisation of what he had just said.
‘Ah! That money,’ she murmured. She took him by the sleeve and pulled him into the main office, but well away from the two men still seated at the desk and watching them with bemused expressions on their curious faces. ‘I wish you hadn’t mentioned that, Moris,’ she said in a lowered voice. ‘That money does not appear to have an owner and is suspected by the police of being laundered drug money. No one could be sure at the time of their enquiries so the police asked us to keep it on our books and tell them the moment anyone called to talk about its disposal. They guessed it would not remain forgotten for long. I’m sorry it had to be you who enquired, Moris, especially after all this time.’ She looked at him earnestly. ‘If that money is tainted, for the sake of old times, just turn around and walk out of the building. I’m willing to overlook who asked.’ She paused to look at him closely as though searching for the truth in his eyes and in his facial expression. ‘The police seemed to have lost interest just lately, although they do send a circular around from time to time asking if anyone has made a claim. They still know about it.’
Dickey smiled. ‘It’s sort of clean money, Barbara, I promise. It’s certainly not laundered money from any criminals I might have associated with in the past, although I have to hold my hand up and say that some of the money in the ‘Fidelity and Mutual’ accounts at the time was just a little iffy, but you bowled me out on that one...’
‘But fifteen million, Moris?’ Barbara hissed. ‘I know you were pulling in big bucks at the time of the deposit, we all were, but not that much.’
‘We’re talking double that at today’s prices,’ Dickey reminded her.
‘Even worse. Moris, you’ll need hands cleaner than the Pope’s after he’s been for a piss to walk away with any of that money.’
‘I got them,’ Dickey protested. ‘Look!’ He thrust his bare hands outwards so that she could inspect them for their visual purity.
‘I see no bearer bonds or letters of authority,’ Barbara said wearily. ‘Without something more positive than a pair of pleading hands I can’t release the money, but now you’ve made enquiries I’m morally and duty bound to report the matter to the police. What do you want me to do Moris? Are you walking, or am I talking?’
Dickey grinned, unperturbed by her threats. ‘I didn’t expect to take it all away with me now,’ he assured her helpfully. ‘I couldn’t get it under my mattress and I’m a light sleeper, but I definitely lay claim to it.’
‘So, I tell the authorities?’ Barbara asked, pleased to be relieved of the conspirital burden he might be about to impose on her.
‘Well, no; not yet,’ Dickey demurred. ‘Keep it under your sombrero for a few more days. I have people to see and papers to collect before I can look the boys in blue straight in the eyes and laugh.’
Barbara sighed wearily. ‘It is dishonest money, isn’t it?’ She smiled a lop-sided smile he remembered so well. ‘It’s a pity we weren’t talking about several billion pounds here, or I might be joining you in a dash for Rio de Janeiro with a few loaded suitcases. These days, thirty million is hardly worth having your collar felt for, let alone a paltry fifteen.’
Dickey nodded as though re-confirming her known innate sense of honesty in his mind.
‘I doubt if you would take a pound coin from the petty cash box if you weren’t entitled to it,’ he grunted approvingly. ‘That’s what I always disliked about you, especially when you shopped us.’
‘I didn’t know your fingers were in the till when I did that, did I?’ Barbara protested. ‘Hawkins yes, but not you. You had too much to lose.’
‘Anyway, give me a few days, and I’ll contact you,’ Dickey decided quickly. He wanted to get away from the unproductive morality issue. There was no point raking over old coals especially as her deskbound guests were becoming impatient by the minute. ‘You got a private number I can call without Rachel putting a stopper on any contacts I might want to make?’
Barbara appeared flustered by the request for a few moments. ‘Why, yes. I’ll get Rachel to give you one of my private cards.’ She looked up with a sudden bright smile. ‘Although she’ll probably ask you to memorise the details and eat the card in her presence. She’s a bright girl. I’m surprised you gave her up.’
‘Put it down to charity,’ Dickey grunted sourly. ‘I always did have a big heart.’ He grimaced to himself as he remembered, at the time of the enforced change of chairman he did not have much choice in the matter of who he could take with him and who he should leave behind. He looked over Barbara’s shoulder. ‘I see you’re talking to the enemy without artillery being manned on both sides.’
‘You mean, John Dacre?’ she asked innocently. ‘He’s always been my enemy, he’s my accountant, remember. There’s no artillery for him, but I’ve booby-trapped his car with explosives for the day he leaves me.’
‘Yeah, accountants are a strange breed right enough, no humour, small dicks, and big boots they tell me,’ Dickey agreed feelingly. ‘No, I meant the boy wonder, Phil Chalmers, ‘JC’ to his only friend, whoever that is. I’m surprised he grew out of short pants without choking on his own moral rectitude.’
‘As I remember he was not all that fond of you either,’ Barbara reminded him succinctly. ‘We fought like cat and dog over your character deficiencies while you were around, but once you left our blighted lives all became liquorice allsorts and fruit flavoured spangles.’
‘Oh, good. I’m glad my departure spread a little happiness in somebody’s life.’
‘We get on well now,’ Barbara added teasingly, ‘although that might be because I’m no longer a member of the ‘Globe and Compass’ board, as you probably know. At the moment he has a spat on with Martin Dempsey and he’s trying to enlist my support.’
‘Some hope of that surely? Aren’t you still into the ‘Globe and Compass’ for a few millions of the original FMA loan?’ Dickey asked shrewdly. ‘I’ve been keeping up to date with your company accounts and I see your premium income has been dropping over the last few years. You’re losing it, doll.’
‘Tell me about it?’ She muttered darkly. ‘In fact, tell me about both subjects. Yes, we still owe the Globe more than I like to think about, but the loan is manageable as long as we keep expanding, but organic growth is not as good as it was in your day. There were no rules then, only those that needed breaking and those you made. Nowadays, our consultants are required to sign everything in triplicate before they talk to a client so the sucker knows where to complain when they’re ripped off.’
‘There’s always money to be made in insurance,’ Dickey reminded her mildly. ‘Even today it’s possible. It’s the world’s most inexhaustible goldmine and you’ll always find someone anxious to dip their fingers into the pie.’
‘You’ll have to talk to my senior sales staff on that subject, Moris, provided what you tell them is legal by today’s rules.’
‘Love to,’ he agreed. Without removing his gaze from the waiting Chalmers he went on: ‘Are you going to support him, Chalmers, I mean?’
Barbara grinned. ‘Are you kidding? I’m trying to get Martin to write off our loan in return for my support, and if he sees me talking to the leader of the anti-Dempsey mob, he’ll pay more attention, won’t he?’
‘Or, he’ll turn the thumbscrews even harder.’
‘No, I don’t think that’s possible. I have friends in high political places who will dissuade him from being too unkind to us helpless minnows.’
‘I did hear that friend Dempsey intended to force you into difficulties and take you over when you defaulted on your loan repayments,’ Dickey revealed dourly, ‘and I must admit I was surprised when he didn’t take the opportunity when I played my blinder.’
‘Perhaps he thought by offering me the chair I’d crash the company, but I didn’t, did I?’ Barbara paused for a moment, but not for personal approval much as she liked male flattery and admiration. His last comments startled and alarmed her. ‘Are you sure about that?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘About wanting to take over the FMA if we crashed, I mean?’
‘I knew it from the day he offered us the loan to buy out the Dutch interest in the ‘Fidelity and Mutual’,’ Dickey snorted. ‘We both knew it. It was a question of who gobbled who first. At the rate we were growing we might have made a bid for them, but I was not prepared to wait. As a company they were always too slow and conservative for me. We could have shaken them up, you and I.’
Barbara shook her head wonderingly. ‘My God, Moris, I always did think you were adventurous, but to plan a reverse take-over of the ‘Globe and Compass’? If you thought that possible in those days then you needed your head read? If you think so now, you need doubly certifying and putting in a straight jacket for your own safety. The sums don’t add up and never did.’
‘You might be right,’ he agreed with an indifferent shrug. ‘But we all have dreams. You had them once, until you became swallowed up in the crossed i’s and the dotted t’s of running an insurance company.’
‘And running a husband, three children and a thriving baronial estate in Somerset,’ Barbara reminded him dryly. ‘They don’t all happen by accident, you know.’ She smiled slowly. ‘If that’s what I’ve been doing, concentrating on dotting i’s and crossing t’s, perhaps that’s why I’m not so successful as you were in running the FMA.’
‘You’ve been doing it longer than I had the chance to, so you must be doing something right,’ he said graciously. ‘Anyway, to dream big you need a big ego and no one had a better idea of where he wanted the company to go than I did.’ Dickey shrugged again this time with the merest hint of theatrical bathos in his expressive brown eyes. ‘But there you go. One false step and you’re sliding down the pan with the rest of the poo.’
‘I had plans too,’ Barbara admitted sheepishly. ‘I wanted to continue growing where you left off, only legally, but all my plans were scuppered by the UK recession and by the government legislation put in place to control the cowboys you sent whooping over the financial ranges...’
‘Hey! I only showed them where the best grass lay, I didn’t tell them to lie, cheat and trespass on other people’s preserves.’ The protest was quietly indignant as though the charge was both unmerited and aimed below the belt.
‘Well, if you think writing and publishing the financial bible didn’t help then you deserve to go to heaven along with the rest of us,’ Barbara agreed cynically. She glanced at the seated men in her office before doing the same to her watch. She was busy, but wanted to stay talking to the vastly more interesting Moris Dickey. ‘Look!’ she said taking him by the sleeve and drawing him back into Rachel’s office. ‘Why don’t you and Tamara drop down to Durmoor this weekend? Linda will be there and we can chat about old times and you and Lucius can talk about breeds of cattle when I’m not monopolising the conversation on more interesting subjects. Lucius is always hanging around cattle markets and coming back smelling of, well, smelling.’
‘Linda?’ Dickey repeated dubiously.
‘You know her?’ Barbara reminded him sharply. ‘Linda Scott, beautiful blonde, blue eyes, figure to kill for, ran Temple Pass for me when I took over the chair of the FMA from you, married the Earl of Yattonham’s son, Morton. He’s our Ambassador in Berlin at the moment, but Linda spends most of her time over here with me. She can’t stand the stuffy diplomatic circus.’
‘How could I forget the lovely Linda,’ Dickey muttered feelingly as the memory flooded back prompted by the graphic description. ‘I was in love with her, I remember, after you, of course.’
‘And your wife Tamara, don’t forget her.’
‘And Tamara,’ Dickey agreed with a rueful smile. ‘Yes, I’d love to come down this weekend, but I’d better confirm that. Do you have..?’
He was about to ask for her personal home telephone number, but Barbara and Rachel both anticipated his wish. Barbara looked enquiringly at Rachel who produced a small business card with all the aplomb of a stage magician producing a rabbit from her sleeve.
A few minutes later the two women bade farewell to their unexpected guest and as he walked out of earshot, Barbara turned to her personal secretary.
‘Any more surprises like that?’ she demanded with a harried look of mild disapproval.
‘He just sort of appeared in the office,’ Rachel protested without explaining the manner of contact.
‘I wonder how he arrived in that case.’ Barbara mused thoughtfully.
Leaving Rachel she hurried into her own office and made for the long windows overlooking the building forecourt many floors below.
‘Was that who I thought it was?’ Philip Chalmers asked as she passed him. ‘I thought that cheating fiddler retired from decent society to give us all a chance to breathe clean air again.’
‘You mean Moris Dickey?’ John Dacre supplied helpfully. ‘Hell, no! He did not retire. He’s been busier than he ever was wheeling and dealing in people’s hopes and aspirations...’
The two men rose from their seats and followed Barbara to where she stood peering through an open window while surveying the array of cars parked in the visitors’ car park far below.
‘I bet it’s that blue chauffeured Bentley,’ she suggested in awe. ‘He always liked flash cars.’ She nodded towards a shiny Bentley where the three watchers could see a grey uniformed driver in a shiny peaked cap of the same colour climb hastily from the front seat in response to a signal from inside the building telling him that his passenger was about to appear and it was time to depart.
If anyone had taken her bet Barbara would have won. A few seconds later the fast striding Dickey emerged from the building, strode briskly down the few steps leading from the seventeen-story office block and eased himself into the rear seat of the luxury car. If he gave the driver any destination instructions it must have been from inside the vehicle, no acknowledgement of any orders were noticed as the door closed and the driver returned to his position.
Barbara closed the window as the Bentley moved forward and eased out the company car park on its way to the Commercial Road and the West End of London.
‘He doesn’t look as though he’s on his uppers,’ Chalmers grunted disgustedly. ‘I always did say that Martin Dempsey was too damned lenient with that man. He should have prosecuted just like I said at the time. The man’s a pariah. He should have been placed in the stocks in Trafalgar Square and kept there for twenty years as an example to us all, and then hung.’
‘Come now, Philip, where’s your Christian charity and good fellowship, the ‘Globe and Compass’ weren’t put to any financial loss?’ John Dacre remonstrated as they returned to the desk and Barbara settled into her soft, black leather seat behind it. ‘Nor was the ‘Fidelity and Mutual’ out of pocket come to that. In fact, Dickey had more money in the company than he could account for in purely legitimate commercial activity. That was his crime against humanity and many chairmen of successful companies would be dementedly happy to be in that enviable position.’
Chalmers shrugged, plainly unimpressed by Dacre’s appeal to justice and reason.
‘Well, I don’t think Martin’s going to be happy knowing he’s hanging around here again after what happened ten years ago.’ He looked across the wide desk at the thoughtful Barbara. ‘What did he want?’ he demanded impertinently.
‘Want?’ Barbara repeated as though her mind was on another subject and needed to refocus. ‘Oh, he has insurance and pension policies with this company and wanted a performance update.’ She lied easily and exchanged warning glances with a wondering Dacre, but added nothing more informative. ‘I said we’d send him a forecast through the post.’
If Chalmers believed her story he said nothing. ‘I’m wondering if I should report this?’ he mused crossly. ‘It might influence their thinking about our relationship with this company.’
‘It might also influence their thinking about your relationship with their chairman,’ Dacre reminded him smoothly. ‘I don’t see how you can admit seeing Moris Dickey here without also revealing your own questionable presence in the same place. Won’t Martin wonder why you’re sucking up to us?’
Chalmers sighed, plainly confused by the invidious position he found himself. He owed his loyalty to the ‘Globe and Compass’ board, but also wanted ‘Fidelity and Mutual’ support in his efforts to frustrate the appointment of Martin Dempsey’s son as the next G&C chairman. He scratched his cheek pensively to give himself thinking time.
‘You might be right,’ he agreed finally. ‘If that’s all he really wanted.’ He glanced at his watch. Suddenly the urgency had gone out of his need to be in the same office where his one-time sworn mortal enemy had breathed the same air. ‘Perhaps we might consider our positions after I’ve passed on your comments to my associates.’ He slid his chair back and bent to collect the bulging black leather briefcase lying at his feet.
‘And what are our comments?’ Barbara asked. They had not reached any consensus that she could remember.
‘That you didn’t want to be embarrassed by having your support for our cause bruited about before we collected a majority for rejection.’ Chalmers reminded her amiably. That is what Barbara had been saying before the meeting broke up a few minutes earlier. Tall, spare and ascetic Chalmers was not a man to indulge in idle chat, or with merriment not demanded by the particular occasion. This degraded meeting plainly did not now rate the exchange of pleasant valedictory smiles and courtesies, even with a woman as lovely as his host. He shook Dacre’s hand as the accountant scrambled hastily to his feet, surprised by the abrupt termination of the meeting. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said tersely.
The valediction was intended to serve both members of the meeting as he stepped from the clutter of chairs and made his way to the door and through it without looking back.
With a mild look of surprise Barbara watched him depart. ‘Do you think, friend Dickey poured a bucket of cold water over his campfire?’ she asked quizzically.
‘Either that or he suddenly remembered he was on to a promise,’ Dacre suggested cynically. His demeanour remained serious as his active mind ranged over the possible reasons for Dickey’s unexpected arrival and departure. ‘He’s after the money?’ he hazarded without positively identifying the subject of his comment.
Barbara nodded perceptively needing no additional prompting. ‘He said he has good title...’
‘Good title?’ Dacre repeated scornfully. ‘Good for what! My accountancy thugs, the serious fraud office, and the collective brains of the insurance industry investigators couldn’t put a handle on it. Between them they bowled out most of the funny money in the FMA accounts, but not that pile.’ He paused as he saw her look away with a pained expression in her green eyes. ‘You’re not going to shop him, are you?’ he ended lamely.
‘I’ve given him until the weekend to come up with some cast iron ownership evidence,’ she admitted. ‘If he can’t, I’ll have to inform the police. It’s what they asked us to do, wasn’t it? Although I’m not sure they expected the caller to be him?’ She leaned across to switch on a computer video screen sitting on a small table beside her elbow. ‘Can you pull the orphan records?’ she asked. ‘I don’t even know how much the money’s worth after the length of time it’s been lying in our accounts.’ She moved aside as Dacre took her chair and pressed a few terminal keys. He knew his way around the FMA computers better than he did his own office set up.
‘I think we placed the money in a reserve fund, if my memory serves me right,’ he murmured as he scrolled through the many funds and accounts an insurance company kept its numerous funds under. ‘Ah, yes, here it is tucked in with all the other unclaimed money. We have fifteen million, two hundred and thirty eight thousand pounds on deposit. Not a bad sum to have squirreled away for a rainy day, providing the owner can put his or her paws on it.’
‘Hers?’ Barbara repeated curiously.
Dacre spread his hands in a disclaiming fashion. ‘Could belong to his wife, I suppose,’ he suggested airily. ‘If he had a good accountant it would be.’
‘Give it to Tamara?’ gasped Barbara in mock disbelief. ‘He never gave her any more money than he thought she needed for housekeeping, not that she didn’t ask.’ They stood looking at the impressive lines of figures on the screen. ‘Of course that’s not the final sum,’ she murmured gloomily. ‘I expect it’s doubled in value since it’s been lying there.’
Dacre tapped a few more keys. ‘We invested in blue chip companies and long bonds,’ he told her thoughtfully. ‘The gain won’t be as good as an adventurous punt on the stock exchange by a good fund manager, but I guess it saves us having to explain how we changed a huge fortune into a small one.’ He smiled grimly at his own black humour. ‘Then, of course there’s your administration costs to deduct and capital gains will have to be paid by the lucky owner when he, or she, takes it away in their wheelbarrows. That’ll make their eyes water. Still, like you say, it’s doubled in value, more or less.’
Barbara turned from the video screen to look at Dacre. ‘You were saying that Moris has been busy since losing this job. I hadn’t heard anything detrimental that had his dabs all over. What’s he been doing, apart from interfering with some poor bovine’s sex life?’
‘Well, he’s been doing that right enough, and he’s also been working as a consultant for the SA Bank....’