For The Love Of Money, Brian Doswell [books for students to read .txt] 📗

it tonight – will call you XXX-A’. The message told her nothing and he hadn’t called. Their plan was for her to fly down with Sue and he would drive down in the Porsche when the markets closed. He would also get Marjorie, George’s PA, to package up any important mail and bring it down with him for George. Lucy could not know that Andrew had spent the evening in Balls Brothers drinking champagne and drooling into Chrissie’s ample cleavage which is why he was late arriving at the tunnel and had chosen to spend the night in Ashford instead of arriving in France at midnight. Lucy had tried to call his mobile several times hoping to have something to tell Sue at breakfast time, but his phone seemed to be off.
When Lucy finally made it to the breakfast table, Sue had finished her croissant and left, intending to walk down the hill and introduce herself to the English woman painter. George looked up from the keyboard and pointed to the coffee pot.
“Good morning lovely lady, help yourself to coffee. Any word from Andrew yet?”
Lucy poured strong black coffee into a fresh cup. “Not a peep. I can’t understand it George, he usually phones to let me know where he wants me to think he is.”
George laughed at her comment. “He’s a big boy Lucy, I’m sure he will be OK, wherever he is. Please feel free to use the pool. Skinny dipping is mandatory of course.”
“I don’t think I’ll bother this morning. I’d hate to be dripping all over your table when my husband gets here.” Lucy always expected a base level of comment from George and was rarely disappointed.
“Has your better half deserted you this morning?”
George closed his laptop. “She’s gone to find our new neighbour, an English lady, a painter of sorts who has recently bought an old cottage on the other side of the village. The woman has been setting up her easel in our vines for the last week or so according to Arnaud. Can’t do any harm I suppose.”
Lucy tore the end off a croissant, folded it into her mouth and brushed an errant pastry flake from her chin.
“George,” Lucy’s voice told him there was a question coming. “What happened to Coulter Brothers, could that happen to anyone else?”
“Wilkinson’s is in good shape, if that’s what you mean. Most of our business is off-shore; we don’t need to be bailed out. Fortunately for me, Andrew happened to come to me at a time when I had decided to mop up a lot of loose ends in the Euro zone. He will sort it out for me. I have every confidence in him.”
“Thank you George, you’re a sweetie.” Lucy leaned across the table and planted a big wet kiss on George’s forehead. “I think I’ll go and find Sue.”
George returned to his laptop and clicked into the internet.
Lucy caught up with Sue in the lane that bordered the vines. She was chatting to a lady who was sitting at an artist’s easel on which rested a fair attempt to catch the dusty shades of green peppered with early autumn browns and yellows that spread across the fields in front of her.
Sue introduced Jane Ellis and recounted the story of her recent arrival from Harrow.
“Virtually on our doorstep.” said Sue, “life is full of co-incidences.”
Lucy was about to make a suitable reply when her mobile phone interrupted. “I must take this, it’s bound to be Andrew.”
“Andrew, where are you?” Lucy listened to the phone for several moments. “OK, be careful. Don’t let that car get the better of you.”
With a sigh of relief, she explained that Andrew had stayed in Ashford, caught the morning train through the tunnel and was already south of Orléans. The integral phone system in the new car was not set to roam and so he was not able to call her until he stopped for petrol and used a call booth. With luck he would be with them before lunch.
Sue took up the conversation and explained the whole thing over again to Jane, who really could not have cared less. Porsches, integral phones and vineyards were still part of another world for her and her mother who were settling in very well and not missing Station Road Harrow one jot.
Andrew did indeed arrive shortly after one, complete with abject apologies and a large envelope full of post for George.
Sue arranged for lunch to be served in the dining room with the four of them sitting round the end of a table that would easily seat twelve. Lunch was a bowl of pumpkin and chestnut soup accompanied by crisp French bread still warm from the baker’s oven. George’s side of the table was littered with sheets of paper from the post bag that Marjorie had sent on.
“Can’t that wait George?” Sue knew it was a silly question. Once George had started on something, he rarely let go until it was done.
George did not answer.
The conversation dipped, save for occasional comments about the soup or the merits of French bread, served straight from the baker’s oven.
Lucy, who happened to be seated nearest to George, could not help noticing the occasional paragraph among the discarded papers. The distinctive logo of the Financial Services Authority topped several of the sheets.
Andrew elected for a siesta after lunch, partly to sleep off the previous evening in Balls Brothers bar and partly to avoid Lucy’s questions about his reason for being there at all. However, as so often happens, an afternoon sleep gets disturbed by the business of the house. In this case, it was disturbed by a phone ringing in the adjacent room, George’s room. He could only hear occasional words and only George’s side of the conversation. The call was clearly about business and Andrew wondered who might be making such a call, on a Saturday, and to France.
The four assembled at seven in the evening and rode together into Luynes for dinner in the Mercedes ML350 that George kept at the villa. He insisted that having a French car with left hand drive and French registration would help to make him anonymous among the locals. On the other hand, there were few in the small community of Luynes who would fail to recognise the silver Mercedes and its English drivers.
Dinner was a quiet affair with hardly any conversation beyond the verbal dissection around the menu and the associated wine list. George appeared too deep into his own thoughts to contribute at all, except for muttering about ludicrous extravagance, when it came to paying the bill. The drive back up the hill was equally silent, followed by an early night.
As she pulled the duvet over her shoulder, Lucy asked, “Andrew, why is there so much stuff from the FSA in George’s post. Everything’s OK isn’t it?”
Andrew muttered reassuring noises but went to sleep pondering on the same question and wondering who had been the urgent caller that afternoon.
On Sunday morning, Sue and Lucy left early to pick up Elise Sande and head for the antiques market in Saumur. Andrew decided to take the Porsche for a spin and left shortly after the girls, heading nowhere in particular and in no particular hurry to get there.
George sat alone in the first-floor room that served as his study and flipped open his laptop. Of thirteen emails on his new list, five were from Sir William. Four of those were follow-ups to the main message,
‘I’m sorry to press but I need a decision from you about the housing project. I have other investors waiting to take your place. I will hold my offer to you and McAllister for as long as I can.’
George sat back in his armchair to ponder the email. Several things busied his mind. He was only recently acquainted with Sir William and to be honest he really didn’t like the man. His mind associated Billy with Silly and he had no time for silliness in business. Why was Sir William in such a rush for such a comparatively small amount of money? Surely £10 million was peanuts to the chairman of such a large building firm? George had an abiding feeling that there was something vaguely wrong about this deal. Sir William had mentioned that the land was extremely undervalued. Why was that? How could he check up on it without knowing exactly where it was and who owned it?
Secondly, he did not have two million sitting in the bank to write a cheque against. Who did? He would have to move things around. The stock market was in a mess with share prices plummeting. He had only recently moved a large slice of his holdings into gold and now was not the best time to dip into that bucket again. He also regretted promising Andrew a two million advance on his bonus, especially as one of the letters in front of him was a circular from the FSA, outlining their proposed changes to the regulations regarding executive bonus payments. The easy answer seemed to be to act in his capacity as Chairman of Wilkinson’s and authorise a director’s Loan for the four million. He could arrange for it to be drawn on the Euro fund management account. Technically that could be construed as misappropriation of client funds but, as it was effectively outside the immediate sight of the FSA, it would be less obvious. However, he could hardly do that without involving Andrew as head of the Euro desk, in which case he would have to explain to Andrew why the Sterling accounts were as tight as they were, and he was not ready to do that yet. He had requested a high-level funding review with Andersons Bank but that was a full week ago and answer was there none. He returned to Sir William’s email.
‘Sorry again George, but I need to get our offer on the table early this coming week. Let me know if you’re in or out.’
George was many things but not a ditherer. He was in and replied to Sir Williams email to that effect. Now all he had to do was find four million, in cash, within the week. He logged onto the LSE exchange rates, 90 pence to the Euro seemed a good working figure. Using his private access code, he transferred five million Euros from Wilkinson’s Euro Fund 27, into his personal account allowing for the possibility of income tax to be paid on the basic sum. The E27 fund stood at well over five hundred million Euros, so five more or less would not show up for a while. When Andrew got back form his jaunt in the countryside, he would transfer two million to Andrew’s personal account and then, in his own time, request the deposit details from Sir William.
George walked down stairs feeling relaxed in so far as the deed was done, and excited in that he knew he was stretching every rule in the book - stretching but not breaking, at least not by much. It was just over five months to the year end. It wouldn’t be the first time he had stepped over the line; he mimed the stepping action for his own amusement as he entered the lounge. So long as no one noticed, all could be put right at the end of the quarter. A bottle of Domaine de Sande was in order, George reached for a corkscrew.

§§§§§

Sunday evening at Villa Padworth was a lively affair compared with the previous evening. Sue and Lucy had both found their respective ‘must buy’ items on the antiques market. Sue had picked a pewter coffee pot on a stand with an integral oil burner designed to keep the pot