Reginald Hill – Midnight Fugue (страница 15)

The thought made him smile as he took his seat alongside the mayor and mayoress, giving them a friendly nod, before leaning forward in the attitude of prayer.

Maggie would be in the seat reserved for her directly behind him. He did not doubt that if he hesitated for a moment when the time came for him to read the lesson, he would hear her dry cough or even feel a gentle prod between the shoulder blades.

He thought nostalgically of Maggie’s predecessor, Nikki. She’d been a perfect example of what he thought of as the two-metre model of PA: one metre of leg and another of bust, with shampoo-ad hair, pouting lips and a vibrator tongue. Unhappily, her tongue had been put to uses other than assisting him to the acme of pleasure. He’d been taken aback when she’d suddenly quit her job the previous year, and devastated when he started hearing rumours that she was negotiating a deal with the Daily Messenger for her steamy reminiscences of life under, and on top of, the Tory Golden Boy.

Dave didn’t turn to his father for help immediately. A strange mixture of love and resentment kept him away. He loved and admired Goldie and had every confidence he could fix things, but at the same time he wanted to affirm his own independence.

Put another way, he was a big boy now and big boys fought their own fights.

Except, he was eventually forced to admit, when they were up against the Daily Messenger, which specialized in chopping big boys down to size.

Goldie listened in silence. But he wasn’t silent two days later when he summoned his son to tell him the crisis was over.

Dave the Third, the Great Off-white Hope of the Tory Party and the next prime minister but one, had to stand before his father like an errant schoolboy and listen to a long analysis of all his shortcomings without right of reply.

‘Best thing for you, boy,’ Goldie had concluded, ‘is to get yourself a wife, someone like your mammy: loyal, home-loving, hardworking. But till you do that, if you can’t keep your dick in your pants, don’t stick it into anyone who doesn’t have at least as much to lose as you do if word gets out. And one last thing. When you advertise for a new PA, I’ll draw up the shortlist.’

That had been a year ago. The shortlist had consisted of three young men whom he’d dismissed out of hand and three singularly unattractive women, of whom Maggie Pinchbeck was undoubtedly the worst.

He recalled his first sight of her at interview, a small, mousey-haired creature who for all the clues her face, figure or even her drab trouser suit provided, could have been male or female; and undesirable in either gender. Her present job was as a senior PR officer at ChildSave, one of the big international child-protection charities. She looked the type who should be out in the desert digging latrines for fuzzy-wuzzies, he thought. This wouldn’t take long.

He’d been forced to admit she interviewed well, answering every question he asked with intelligence and economy. But he still hadn’t the slightest notion of employing her, a feeling reinforced when in conclusion he asked if she had any questions of her own.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘From time to time doubts have been expressed about the way your father acquired his fortune. In what degree do you share these doubts?’

Jesus! he thought. You take no prisoners.

He said, ‘I take it you’re referring to the scandal sheets in general and the Messenger in particular? Naturally those sad wankers would like to put a spoke in my wheel, and as I haven’t offered much ammunition, they reckon that smearing my father will serve their purpose just as well. I should point out that whenever these muckrakers have dared move beyond innuendo, my pa’s lawyers have made them pay heavily.’

‘You haven’t answered my question, Mr Gidman. Do you yourself have any doubts about the methods used by your father in establishing the basis of his fortune?’

He was tempted to tell her to sod off back to kiddy-land, then he had a better idea.

‘Tell you what, why don’t you ask him yourself?’

This had seemed an amusing way of getting back at Pappy. He’d brought together this gang of inadequates, let him see for himself the kind of creature his efforts had dug up. At the same time it would be a fitting punishment for this epicene dwarf’s insolence. Questioning his early career always put Goldie in a bad mood. He would chew her up and spit her out!

He put the woman in his Audi A8 and watched her covertly as he drove north. To his disappointment she showed neither alarm nor surprise when he didn’t head for the Gresham Street offices of Gidman Enterprises, and they had proceeded in silence till a couple of miles before Waltham Abbey he turned off on to a narrow country road. A few minutes later they pulled up before a set of imposing gates, one column of which bore the name Windrush House, while on the other a CCTV camera tilted down towards them.

Gidman waved at it, the gates swung silently open and he drove sedately up a long gravelled drive winding through an avenue of plane trees towards an imposing Victorian mansion in dull red brick that not even bright sunlight could render welcoming.

‘This the family estate then?’ said Maggie. ‘How long has your father had it?’

‘Ten years. And it’s hardly an estate.’

‘Whatever. Must have been quite a change relocating here from the East End.’

‘It’s still in Essex,’ said Gidman, a touch defensively.

‘Stayed true to his roots then,’ she observed blandly.

At the front door a woman in a headscarf and slacks, on her knees to polish the already mirror-like brass letter box, looked up with a toothy smile and said, ‘Dave, my lovely, now this is nice. We wasn’t expecting you.’

Maggie assumed she was a domestic with enough service to give her familiarity rights till Gidman stooped and kissed her and said, ‘Hi, Mom. This is Ms Pinchbeck, who wants to work for me.’

‘Rather you than me, ducks,’ said the woman. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘And you, Mrs Gidman,’ said Maggie.

‘Call me Flo,’ said the woman. ‘In you go. I expect you’re dying for a cup of tea.’

Maggie’s pre-interview researches had told her that Flo had been a sixteen-year-old waitress in a London café when Goldie met her. By all accounts, it had been a marriage few on either side had approved and even fewer had forecast would prosper. Yet here she was, nearly half a century later, a bit plumper but with her old East End accent unrefined. ‘And still doing everything around the house,’ her son proclaimed proudly. ‘She gets some help with the cleaning these days, but she’s in total charge of the kitchen.’

The only live-in staff, Maggie later discovered, were Goldie’s old assistant, Milton Slingsby, and Sling’s nephew, an out-going young man called Dean who controlled the gate and other house security from a hi-tech office just off the entrance hall.

Already at this first visit Maggie was finding her expectations of baronial pretentiousness disappointed.

Goldie Gidman, in his late sixties, was as imposing a figure as his house, but a lot more welcoming. He had aged well, his lean muscular frame was supple rather than sagging, and the contrast between his vigorous white locks and almost black skin was something a lot of women might find very attractive.

To his son he said, ‘Hope you haven’t been spewing gravel over my lawn with that Panzer of yours.’

Maggie Pinchbeck he greeted with grave courtesy and sat there quietly observing her as Flo fussed about with teacups and home-made chocolate sponge.

Satisfied at last, Flo withdrew. She had done her job well, thought her son. If you came to see Goldie with expectations of being confronted by a jumped-up yardie, five minutes of exposure to Flo made you do a rethink.

He sat back to watch the fun.

‘Dave says you got some questions to ask me, Miss Pinchbeck,’ said Goldie.

She didn’t hang about.

‘How did you make your money, Mr Gidman? In the beginning, I mean.’

‘Like most entrepreneurs, started with a little, invested wisely till I’d got a lot.’

‘Were you ever a loan shark?’

‘I did spend time in the personal credit business, yes.’

‘You mean, you were a loan shark?’

‘A loan shark being someone who loans out money to poor people at exorbitant interest rates and terrorizes them if they renege on repayments?’

‘That sounds a reasonable definition.’

‘No, I wasn’t one of them. My father was what is now called a community leader. Back then it just meant his reputation for good sense and honesty led other West Indian immigrants to turn to him for help and advice.’

‘You saying you were a community leader too?’ interrupted Maggie.

Goldie Gidman smiled.

‘Not me. I was the first black yuppie, before there were white yuppies, I make no bones. But I loved my pa and when he told me members of our community found it difficult to get credit through the usual channels, I organized a neighbourhood credit club. Folk could borrow small sums on easy terms for purposes approved by the club’s advisory committee. This way they kept out of the jaws of them loan sharks you talk about.’

‘So where do all the rumours that you were one of the sharks come from?’