Authors: Michael Ridpath
I sighed, angry rather than embarrassed. Hoyle noticed.
‘Sorry. You were young, she was beautiful, and she was using you. Tony knew that. But I’m sure he didn’t murder her. I’ve spoken to him many times over the years about her death and, while I wouldn’t expect him to admit it to me, I’m sure I’d be able to tell if he had killed her.’
Hoyle sipped his coffee thoughtfully. ‘Tony Jourdan was much more than a client. He was my friend. We met when we were students together. He was one of the reasons I moved out to Monte Carlo. We’ve been through a lot together over the years, ups and downs. I was very sorry when he died. Very sorry.’
He put down his cup. ‘Now, I really must find a taxi.’ With a heave, he pulled himself to his feet and left me hunched over my cooling cup of coffee.
We closed a deal with Orchestra Ventures in record time. Orchestra bought out Tony Jourdan’s trust for four million pounds, twice his initial investment, and put in a further ten million. They ended up with seventy per cent of the company, leaving plenty for the management and employees. The board changed, of course. Orchestra found us a new chairman, Derek Silverman. He was a trim grey-haired businessman of about fifty. He had already made several million
pounds from a management buyout of a marketing business that had been funded by one of Orchestra’s partners. More importantly, he was chairman of a Premier League club. Henry also joined the board as Orchestra’s representative and Patrick Hoyle was booted off.
Guy suggested Ingrid as a third executive director. She had made herself an indispensable member of the team and both Guy and I valued her judgement more by the day. Henry liked her, so she was in. Her only difficulty was with Mel. They were cool towards each other, but professional, and they did their best to keep out of each other’s way.
With the deal done and the ten million in the bank, we hit the ground running. There was plenty to spend it on. More office space: we took over the floor below. More staff, especially more journalists. Advertising. Gearing up the on-line retailing. Henry didn’t mind this profligacy. In the upside-down world of internet valuations, the more you spent on getting a website established, the more it was worth. So spend, spend, spend.
It worked. Visitor numbers to the website rose strongly as the season got under way. In the month of September we logged over four hundred thousand visitors and nearly three million page impressions. There were other soccer websites out there, but we were eating into their market share. Gaz’s stuff was just better. The site looked more attractive. It was quick, easy and fun to use. Guy began to sign up a network of partnerships with everyone from the leading search engines, to internet service providers, to online newspapers, to special-interest sites like ours. We signed a deal with Westbourne, one of the largest bookmakers in the country, for on-line soccer betting. It became popular immediately, and even generated a revenue stream.
We needed to generate dozens of stories a day for the site: transfer and injury news, gossip, opinion, and, of course,
match reports. This required an ever-growing band of journalists, each controlling a network of freelances and contacts within the club system. We put television screens on the walls and, more importantly, installed software that allowed the journalists to watch video or listen to radio commentary live on their computers.
Gaz came up with a high-profile scoop: the signing of one of Brazil’s top strikers by a major Premier League club for twenty-five million pounds. The club denied it and for two days it looked as if we had got things badly wrong. The tabloids ridiculed us, but Gaz was confident. Sure enough, the story was confirmed. Later, Gaz told me his source was the fourteen-year-old son of one of the club’s directors, who was an enthusiastic fan of our site.
With all this activity, there was scarcely time to think. And when there was time, I thought about Ninetyminutes. I didn’t hear any more from the police, nor did I discuss Tony’s death with Guy. But Patrick Hoyle’s words rankled. I tried to push them out of my mind, but they kept returning.
It
was
too convenient.
One morning I phoned the office to say I wouldn’t be coming in until the afternoon. Guy sounded a little surprised, especially when I told him I was going flying. He knew I hadn’t been since I had started working at Ninetyminutes nearly six months before.
It was a sunny day in early October, with a fresh breeze to blow away any autumnal mist or London smog. It felt good to be at the controls of an aeroplane again, alone, a couple of thousand feet above the ground, with England stretching out like a carpet of green, gold and brown beneath me. I flew over the Hampshire downs to one of my favourite airfields, Bembridge on the Isle of Wight, and walked the mile or so up the steep hill to the cliff tops above Whitecliff Bay.
It was cool up there in the breeze, but it was quiet and it was a long way from Ninetyminutes. I was hoping the distance would give me some perspective.
It did.
For the first time I faced up to the question I had been avoiding. Had Guy killed his father?
On the face of it, it was possible. Ninetyminutes had meant everything to Guy and his father had threatened to take it away. Tony had a hold over Guy that was difficult for me to understand, but it was powerful and I knew Guy wanted to break free from it. The police had certainly thought of Guy as a suspect. Owen had stood by him, provided him with an alibi, but then Owen had always stood by Guy.
But I had spoken to Guy on the day of the funeral. He had seemed genuinely upset about his father’s death. That was the thing with Guy. We were close. He could lay open his emotions to me. Over the last few months I had seen him in the good times and the bad. He trusted me with his feelings.
But he had also been a professional actor once. Could I really trust him?
I remembered when these same thoughts had invaded my mind, on Mull, when Mel had told me about Guy arranging to pay off Abdulatif. Both Patrick and Mel had seemed to suggest that Guy had done this to protect himself. That he had killed Dominique.
There was one other loose end. The footprint Guy had left outside Dominique’s window the night she died. I had never received a satisfactory answer from him on that. I knew he hadn’t put it there when the two of us had gone to bed. So how had it got there?
And then Abdulatif had himself been murdered. By Guy?
Had Guy really killed three people over the last thirteen years? That went against everything I knew about him, against
the trust and friendship we had built up over the previous six months, and against everything I had put into Ninetyminutes. Unless I was able to put my doubts about Guy behind me, they would undermine everything.
I stared out over the sea. A fat ferryboat inbound from France was charging towards a sleek warship. It looked from my vantage point as if they were going to collide, but they passed each other without noise or fuss: it was only as they overlapped that I realized the warship was a couple of miles further away.
The trouble was, the doubts weren’t going away.
Until I knew for sure whether Guy was involved in these deaths, I wouldn’t be able to trust him. If I didn’t trust him, we couldn’t work together. If we couldn’t work together, ninetyminutes.com would fall apart.
But this wasn’t just about Ninetyminutes. Guy’s friendship was vital to me. If I was ever to do something interesting or unconventional with my life, to become more than just a bean-counting accountant, it would be because of Guy.
I had to convince myself that he was innocent.
I arrived in the office mid-afternoon to confront the usual pandemonium, the mixture of the very important and the entirely inconsequential, all of which had to be dealt with. Guy didn’t mention my morning off, although I could tell he was curious. He went off to a meeting at four, and never came back to the office.
I left work early, which was still about seven thirty, and took the tube to Tower Hill. I followed my familiar path past the Tower of London, looming murderously in the darkness, and the bright lights of St Katherine’s Dock, to Guy’s building in Wapping High Street.
He was in, working on a presentation.
‘What’s up, Davo?’ he said, seeing the expression on my face.
‘I want to talk to you. I need to talk to you.’
‘OK. Come in. Beer?’
I nodded. He pulled two out of the fridge, handed one to me and opened his own. ‘What is it?’
I hesitated, searching for the words. I wanted to know the truth. But I didn’t want to make it seem that I didn’t trust Guy. In fact, it was because I wanted to trust him that I was here at all.
In the end, I looked him in the eye. ‘Did you kill your father?’
Guy was about to protest. Then he thought better of it. He returned my gaze.
‘No.’
We stayed like that for a few moments, his brilliant blue
eyes looking steadily into mine. He used to be an actor. He was a professional at hiding his real self. Yet he was my friend. We had been through so much together.
‘Good,’ I said at last. ‘But do you mind if I ask you a few questions? Difficult questions.’
‘Do you feel you have to?’
‘Yes,’ I said firmly.
Guy sighed. ‘OK. Ask.’
‘Where were you on the night he died?’ I asked, trying to make the question sound as dispassionate as possible.
‘I went out for a drink with Owen.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘The Elephant’s Head in Camden,’ he muttered, his impatience showing. ‘Near his place.’
‘What time did you leave?’
‘What is this?’ Guy protested. ‘I told the police all this. They checked out my story. Don’t you trust me?’
‘I want to trust you. But I can’t get Tony’s death out of my mind. I need to know who was responsible.’
‘Don’t you think
I
want to know too? He was my father.’
‘If I can start off by eliminating you it’ll make me feel much better.’
Guy scowled. ‘All right. I’ll tell you what I told the police. And what they checked out. Owen and I went to the pub about seven o’clock. We left about nine. I was already half-pissed, but Owen hadn’t had much. He went back to his flat. I went on to Hydra, you know, that bar in Hatton Garden? I came home about eleven.’
‘And your father was killed at nine twenty-five, wasn’t he?’ I said, remembering my interviews with Sergeant Spedding.
‘Something like that.’
Owen and Guy had left the pub at about nine. Just time to get to Knightsbridge if one of them hurried. It was such an obvious point, I didn’t need to make it.
‘Before you say anything,’ Guy said, ‘the police checked out the Elephant’s Head and Hydra.’
‘What about Owen?’
‘He stopped off at a Europa to buy some food on the way home. The CCTV got him. Timed at nine twenty-one. Can’t get better than that.’
You couldn’t.
‘Anyway,’ Guy went on. ‘What about the man you saw in the car? The private detective. He has to be a better suspect than me, doesn’t he?’
I nodded. ‘That’s true.’
‘Any more questions?’ Guy asked.
I had gone this far. I may as well go the whole way. ‘Yes. I was thinking about what happened to Dominique and the gardener.’
Guy looked angry again. ‘Why? What’s that got to do with anything? That was years ago, for God’s sake!’
‘I was talking to Patrick Hoyle about it. He’s convinced your father didn’t kill Dominique. And he told me how Abdulatif tried to blackmail you about paying him off.’
‘I don’t know who killed Dominique! Nor do I care. It was twelve years ago. And as for that bloody gardener, it’s true he tried to blackmail us. But I’ve already told you we paid him off.’
‘You didn’t tell me about the blackmail.’
‘No. Because it wasn’t important. Anyway, he was blackmailing Hoyle, not me. So what are you saying here, Davo?’ Guy’s voice was laced with scorn. ‘I killed all three of them? Because if you are, you can just sod off out of here.’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I was just wondering whether there was any connection between what happened in France and what happened to Tony. Perhaps I should mention it to the police.’
‘For God’s sake, don’t do that. It’ll open up a whole can of worms. This thing is bad enough as it is.’ Guy got a grip
on his anger. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Davo. It’s hard not to get worked up when a friend doubts you. You’re a mate. A good mate. You were with me in France. You’ve been with me this last six months. You should know I don’t wander around killing people.’
‘I know I should,’ I said. ‘But …’
‘But what?’
The truth was, I didn’t know what. There was circumstantial evidence against him, so some suspicion was natural. But he was my friend. He did have a comprehensive alibi that the police had investigated thoroughly. It was Patrick Hoyle’s doubts against Guy’s word.
I considered asking him about the footprint, but I knew that he would only say what he had always said: that he had gone to relieve himself in the bushes. More than ten years on I wouldn’t be able to get him to change that story, even though I knew it was wrong.
I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right. But I had to ask those questions just to clear things up in my head. And you’ve answered them. I ought to go.’
‘No. Have another beer,’ Guy said. He dug a couple out of the fridge and handed one to me with a smile of friendship. My suspicions were forgiven. ‘Now, how are we going to get a Munich office off the ground in three months?’
We chatted amicably about Ninetyminutes for an hour or so. But as I sat in a taxi making its way west towards my flat, I realized that although Guy had made me feel better, I still wasn’t one hundred per cent sure of his innocence. The question was whether I could live with ninety per cent.
The following afternoon I had a meeting with the people who were going to administer the credit-card payments once customers started buying from us on-line. We had chosen this particular company because they had assured us that the
process would be straightforward. It wasn’t. It was one of those meetings where more problems emerged than were solved. Frustrated, I returned to the office. I turned on my computer and checked my e-mails. There was one from Owen. I opened it, preparing myself for an obscure techie rant.