To the Hilt Page 5

  He introduced his assistant dismissively as “Miranda,” and it was my mother who settled her helpfully at Ivan’s desk against one wall, and made space for her to set out her portable machines.

  Grantchester said to Ivan, “You want to draw up a power of attorney? Very wise of you, if I may say so, in view of your health. I brought with me a basic document. You have that ready, Miranda?” Miranda meekly nodded. Grantchester went on, “It’s a pity more people aren’t as thoughtful as you, my old friend. Life must go on. A temporary power of attorney will smooth things over nicely until you’re back to your old self again.”

  Ivan meekly agreed.

  “So who is to act for you?” Grantchester asked. “You know I would be honored to help you in any way I can. However, you might prefer to have Patsy. Yes, your daughter will be eminently suitable. I expect you’ve already discussed it with her.” He looked round the room as if expecting her to materialize. “Patsy it is, then.” To Miranda he said in explanation, “Draw up the document, naming Mrs. Patsy Benchmark, Sir Ivan’s daughter.”

  Ivan cleared his throat and said to her, “No. Not Mrs. Benchmark. I’m giving the power of attorney to my stepson, here. Write Alexander Kinloch.”

  Oliver Grantchester’s mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. He looked utterly astounded and also angry.

  “Alexander Robert Kinloch,” Ivan repeated to Miranda, and spelled out my last name letter by letter so that there should be no mistake.

  The lawyer, finally finding his voice, said, “You can’t.”

  “Why not?” Ivan asked.

  “But he’s... he’s... Look at him.”

  “He has long hair,” Ivan agreed. “I wish he would cut it. All the same...”

  “But your daughter,” Grantchester protested. “What will she say?”

  What Patsy would say raised anxious lines on Ivan’s forehead. He gave me a long look of doubt, and I looked back with calm, allowing the decision to be his alone. If Patsy got her busy fingers on his affairs, I thought, he would never get them back.

  Ivan looked at my mother. “Vivienne, what do you think?”

  She clearly felt, as I did, that he would have to make up his own mind. She said, “The choice is yours, my dear. Your judgment is best.”

  Ivan said to me, “Alexander?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I advise Mrs. Benchmark,” Oliver Grantchester said firmly. “She’s the natural person. She’s your heir.”

  Ivan dithered. The post-heart attack Ivan dithered where once he would have dominated. The brewery’s predicament had knocked his certainties to pulp.

  “Alexander,” he said finally, “I want you.”

  I nodded, giving him a tacit promise.

  “Alexander,” he said to Grantchester. “I’ll give the power of attorney to him. ”

  “You could have both of them,” his lawyer said desperately. “You could have both of them, acting jointly.”

  Even he could see, though, that such a path would lead to chaos.

  “Only Alexander,” Ivan said.

  His lawyer wouldn’t accept it without a struggle. I listened to him trying to persuade Ivan with heavy legal arguments to change his decision, and I thought frivolously that, never mind my stepfather, it was Oliver himself who didn’t want to have to deal with Patsy raging.

  Ivan, true at least to part of his nature, wouldn’t be budged. Miranda typed my name on the document and Grantchester told me crossly to sign it, which I did. Ivan, of course, signed it also.

  “Make certified copies,” Ivan said. “Make ten.”

  With irritation the lawyer waved at Miranda, who made ten copies on a portable fax machine. Grantchester himself signed them all, certifying, I gathered, that the power of attorney had been properly drawn.

  “Also,” Ivan said tiredly, “I will write a letter to the brewery’s Company Secretary making Alexander my Alternate Director, which will give him authority to act on my behalf in all business decisions at the brewery, not just my personal affairs, that are covered by the power of attorney.”

  “You can’t!” Grantchester said explosively. “He knows nothing at all about business.”

  Ivan looked at me calmly. “I think he does,” he said.

  “But he’s... he’s an artist.” Grantchester filled the word with an opinion near contempt.

  Ivan said obstinately, “Alexander will be my Alternate Director. I’ll write the letter at once.”

  The lawyer scowled. “No good will come of it,” he said.

  chapter 3

  My mother gave me her National Westminister Bank card for getting cash from machines and told me her secret number: a very extreme manifestation of trust.

  I used the card and bought a train ticket to Reading, though I didn’t, as she’d begged, acquire some “decent” clothes before arriving at the offices of Pierce, Tollright and Simmonds.

  I took with me from Ivan’s study a folder containing the power of attorney, the certified copies and a copy of Ivan’s handwritten letter appointing me his Alternate Director.

  Tobias Tollright looked me up and down, inspected the power of attorney and Ivan’s letter and telephoned my mother.

  “This person who says he’s your son,” he asked her, “would you please describe him.”

  He had his office phone switched to conference, so I could hear her resigned reply.

  “He’s about six feet tall. Thin. He has chestnut hair, wavy, curling onto his shoulders. And, oh yes, he has a black eye.”

  Tobias thanked her and disconnected, his enthusiasm for my appearance still bumping along at zero in a way that I was used to from men in suits.

  “What is wrong,” I asked, plunging in, “at the brewery?”

  Once he’d come to terms with the way I looked, he proved both astute and helpful. In my turn I ignored his fussy little mannerism of digging round his teeth with a succession of wooden picks and making sucking noises, and concentrated on understanding the mumbled nasal voice that bypassed the cleaning. He was barely ten years older than myself, I reckoned. Not enough age gap, anyway, for him to pull much advantage of seniority. After the first ten minutes we got on fine.

  His office was a boring functional box with a view of railway lines from a stark window and strip lighting overhead that developed bags under the youngest eyes. Interesting to paint (a thin glaze of ultramarine perhaps, over yellow ocher) but terrible to live with.

  “Basically,” he said, “the man in charge of the brewery’s finances has milked the cow and done a bunk to Brazil or some such haven with no extradition treaties. The brewery cannot in consequence meet its obligations. The creditors are restive, to put it mildly, and as auditor I cannot at the moment give King Alfred an OK to continue trading.”

  More than enough, I thought, to give Ivan a heart attack.

  I asked, “How much is missing?”

  He smiled. “How big is a fog?”

  “You mean, you don’t know?”

  “Our embezzler was the Finance Director. He worked the three-card trick. Find the queen... but she’s gone to a nice anonymous bank account forever and all you have left is debts.”

  I frowned. “You’re not being awfully precise.”

  “I warned Sir Ivan last year that I thought he had an open drain somewhere, but he didn’t want to believe it. Now he’s so ill, he still won’t face it. I’m sorry to say it, but there it is. And he would rather cover up the theft, if he can, than admit to the world that he—and his whole Board of Directors—has been careless and even stupid.”

  “And he’s not the first down that road.”

  “Far, far from it.”

  “So... what are your life-belt measures?”

  He hesitated, picking away at the teeth. “I can advise you,” he said, “but I cannot act for you. As an auditor I must keep a certain distance from my clients’ affairs. In effect, I can only point out a course of action you might wish to take.”

  “Then please point.�
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  He fiddled some more with his mouth and I felt sore and in need of sleep and not scintillatingly bright.

  “I would suggest,” he said carefully, “that you might call in an insolvency practitioner.”

  “A who?”

  “Insolvency practitioner. Someone to negotiate for you.”

  “I didn’t know such people existed.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Where do I find one?” I asked blankly.

  “I’ll give you a name. I can do that at least.”

  “And,” I asked gratefully, “what will he do?”

  “She.”

  “Oh... well, what will she do?”

  “If she thinks the brewery can be saved—and to do that she will have to make her own independent assessment of the position—if she thinks there’s still life in the corpse she’ll set up a CVA.”

  He looked at my face. “A CVA,” he explained patiently, “is a creditors’ voluntary arrangement. In other words, she will try to call together a meeting of creditors. She’ll explain to them the scope of the losses, and if she can persuade them that the brewery can go back to trading at a profit, they will together work out a rate at which the debts can be paid off bit by bit. Creditors will always do that if possible, because if they force a firm into total bankruptcy, they don’t get paid much at all.”

  “That,” I said, “I understand.”

  “Then,” Tobias went on, “if the committee, acting with the brewery, can produce to me a budget and a forecast that will satisfy me as auditor that the brewery has a viable future, then I can sign the firm’s accounts, and it can continue to trade.”

  “Well...” I thought for a bit, then said, “What are the chances?”

  “Fairly reasonable.”

  “No higher?”

  “It depends on the creditors.”

  “And... er... who are they?”

  “The usual. The bank. The Inland Revenue. The pension fund. The suppliers.”

  “The bank?”

  “The Finance Director organized a line of credit for expansion. The money’s gone. There’s no expansion and nothing in the bank to service the loan. To pay the interest, that is to say. The bank has given notice that they will not honor any more checks.”

  “And the tax people?”

  “The brewery hasn’t paid its employees’ workers’ compensation contributions for six months. The money’s vanished. As for the pension fund, it’s evaporated. The suppliers in comparison are small beer, if you’ll excuse the dreadful pun; but the can suppliers are berserk.”

  “What a mess,” I said. “Aren’t there any... we... assets?”

  “Sure. The brewery itself. But there’s an outstanding loan on that, too, and nothing left to service it with. The bank would foreclose at a loss.”

  “What about the pubs the brewery owns?” I asked.

  “The tied houses? The Finance Director mortgaged the lot. To put it briefly, that money’s gone too.”

  “It sounds hopeless.”

  “I’ve known worse.”

  “And what about the King Alfred Cup?”

  “Ah.” He concentrated on his teeth. “You might ask Sir Ivan where it is.”

  “At Cheltenham,” I said, puzzled. “They run it at Cheltenham a month on Saturday.”

  “Ah,” he said again. “You’re talking about the race. ”

  “Yes. What else?”

  “The Cup itself,” he said earnestly. “The King Alfred Gold Cup. The chalice. Medieval, I believe.”

  I rubbed a hand over my face. Bruises were catching up.

  “It’s extremely valuable,” Tobias said. “Sir Ivan should really consider selling it to offset some of the debt. But there is some doubt as to whether it belongs to the brewery or to Sir Ivan personally and... I say,” he broke off, “are you feeling all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t look it. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Very much.”

  He bustled about, organizing what turned out to be tea.

  I took another of Keith Robbiston’s pills and slowly stopped sweating. The tea was fine. I smiled feebly to allay Tobias’s kind concern and explained I’d traveled all night on the train, which seemed to him reason enough for faintness in the afternoon, even without the rainbowed eye.

  “Actually,” I said, getting a better grip on things, “I was wondering about the race itself, not the trophy. The race is part of the brewery’s prestige. A sign of its success. Would... er... would the creditors agree to go ahead on the basis of keeping up public confidence in the brewery, even though the prize money will have to be found, and also the money for an entertaining tent and lunch and drinks for maybe a hundred guests? It’s the brewery’s best advertisement, that race. Canceling it now, at this late stage, when the entries are already in, would send a massive message to all and sundry that the company’s in a shaky state... and there’s nothing like an ill wind for blowing a dicky house to rubble.”

  He gazed at me. “You’ll need to say all that to the committee.”

  “She . . . your insolvency angel, couldn’t she say it?” His gaze wandered over my hair and down to my paint-marked jeans, and I could see him think that the race had a better chance of survival with a more conventional advocate.

  “You’ll need to convince her.” He smiled briefly. “You’ve convinced me.” He paused. “Incidentally, among the brewery’s possible assets there is a racehorse. That’s to say, it’s unclear again whether it belongs to the brewery or to Sir Ivan himself. I’d be glad if you could clarify it.”

  “I?”

  “You are in total charge. Your comprehensive powers of attorney make that unquestionably clear.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sir Ivan must have absolute faith in you.”

  “In spite of how I look?”

  “Well...” He gave me suddenly a broad grin. “Since you mention it, yes.”

  “I’m a painter,” I explained, “and I look like one. You don’t find droves of painters in pinstripes.”

  “I suppose not.”

  I drank a second cup of tea and asked idly, “What is the name of the horse?”

  “How do you hide a horse, Alexander... ?”

  Hide a horse. Ye gods.

  “It’s called Golden Malt,” Tobias said.

  Yesterday morning, I thought morosely, I was leading the peaceful if eccentric life of a chronicler of the equally eccentric compulsion to hit a small white ball a furlong or two and tap it over lovingly landscaped grass until it drops into a small round hole. Yesterday morning’s sensible madness now lay the other side of a violent robbery, an aching body, an edge-of-the-grave stepfather, his ordeal by domesticity and his shift onto my shoulders of ever-expanding troubles.

  Ivan, I saw, wanted me to keep his horse hidden away from the clutches of bankruptcy. Ivan had given me the legal right to commit an illegal act.

  “What are you thinking?” Tobias asked.

  “Um ... um... How is the brewery going to pay its workers this week?”

  He sighed. “You do have a way of cutting down to the essentials.”

  “Will the bank cough up?”

  “They say not. Not a penny more.”

  “Do I have to go to them on my knees?”

  He said with compassion, “Yes.”

  It was by then Wednesday afternoon. Payroll day at the brewery, as in most business enterprises, was Friday. On the Tollright telephone I engaged the professional services of the lady negotiator and also made an appointment with the bank for the following morning.

  I asked Tobias how much was needed to keep the ship afloat until the creditors could set up the rescue operation—if they would—and he obligingly referred to King Alfred’s ledgers and told me a sum that made Ivan’s heart attack seem a reasonable response to the information.

  “You can only do your best,” Tobias observed, busy with a toothpick. “None of this is your fault. It appears you’ve just been dumped into
it up to the hilt.”

  I didn’t know whether to wince or smile at the familiar phrase. Up to the hilt... In one particular way I’d been in jeopardy up to the hilt for the last five years. It had taken five years for the demons to arrive at my door.

  I said, “About that horse—Golden Malt, did you say?—why is there a doubt about who owns it?”

  Tobias frowned. “You’ll have to ask Sir Ivan. The horse isn’t listed as an actual asset of the brewery. There’s been no annual claim for depreciation, as if it were office equipment; but the brewery has paid the training fees and claimed them against tax as an advertising expense. As I said, you’ll need to sort it out.”

  For the next hour he tracked with me through the past year’s accounts, item by item. I could see, as he demonstrated, that but for the perfidy of the man in charge of the cash flow, the beer business would have fermented its yeast to its usual profitable heights.

  “The head brewer’s the best asset,” Tobias said. “Don’t lose him.”

  I said helplessly, “I know nothing about brewing beer.”

  “You don’t have to. You are the overall strategist. I’m simply advising you as an outsider... and I can tell you the brewery’s share of the market has risen perceptibly since they appointed this particular brewmaster.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You do look exhausted,” he said.

  “I was never that good at maths.”

  “You’re doing all right.”

  He produced papers for me to sign. I read them and did my best to understand, but trusted a lot to his good faith. As Ivan had trusted his Finance Director, no doubt.

  “Good luck with the bank tomorrow,” Tobias said, shuffling the papers together and sucking his toothpick. “Don’t let them mug you.”

  They wouldn’t be the first, I thought. “Will you come with me?”

  He shook his head. “It’s your job, not mine. I wish you good luck.”

  I said, “There’s one other thing...”