MONEY TREE Read online

  No-one could believe it. He had kids of his own. It just was too out of character. Warwick Stanstead volubly and publicly refused to accept that José was capable of such a double and distorted life. He immediately sent his head of HR in his personal jet down to Rio to inform José’s wife and family face to face. Mrs Cadenza was to be offered the services of Warwick’s jet and private staff to fly up to New York or whatever she wanted to do. Money was no object. Warwick took personal control of the press release and went to some considerable trouble with the NYPD and press corps to quell any mention of José’s quirky death.

  Erin’s mind shut down. It was unthinkable either that José had hidden a vile streak or that Warwick had instigated his death. All she could do was watch Warwick in action. It veered from masterful to bizarre. There was no knowing which character would emerge from his office. His eagle head, with its slick blue-black hair, bobbed in and out throughout the afternoon and early evening, controlling and ordering, making sure nothing was left to chance then throwing everything up in the air in a tantrum over delays to his orders being executed. In his saner moments, the very epitome of the caring leader, dealing sympathetically and equably with secretary and executive alike. Exuding calm and deep concern. Then Mr Hyde emerged, an emotional wreck with no safety valve for his anger or torment. Even Madge was moved to comment:

  ‘Mr Stanstead’s really upset, isn’t he?’

  ‘Isn’t he though,’ Erin managed.

  At his most perverse he summoned the corporate psychiatrist and demanded to know how someone this perverted could be working for him. She’d heard some of Warwick’s thoughts on gays, so this was no surprising divergence. Throughout the performance Erin tried desperately to stop her brain straying into the dark paths of conspiracy and murder. It couldn’t be countenanced. It was insane. Just coincidence. Bosses fired troublesome subordinates. They didn’t have them executed. Finally, Erin fled the building and sent herself early to bed with a very strong vodka tonic and a double dose of Melatonin, her jet lag pill.

  Next day she stumbled into work, hung over and drained. Throughout the day the coincidences mounted, became farce, became nightmare. It was only a line or two on the daily web clippings, but the name caught Erin’s eye. Veronica Yeardon the widow of the former CEO of American Mart, had gone missing. Her daughter was anxious as her mother had been depressed for months following the sudden death of her husband. There was speculation she may have taken herself off for a few days to New York to be on her own, or had broken down completely and wandered away. But her daughter insisted that this wasn’t how her mother behaved.

  Erin concurred. Veronica was sweet and feminine in the way of Southern women of good stock. Beneath the unblemished white skin was a steel core. When it came to managing husbands or family estates, those girls were made of stern stuff. Erin recalled a ten minute conversation that started innocently enough with Paris couture and switched rapidly to capital punishment as an example of New World decadence. It was easy to draw the opinion that Veronica Yeardon would have been one of the last people to vanish without cause. Just before she met José Cadenza and revealed some dreadful news about Warwick Stanstead.

  Erin nursed her feelings of dread to herself until she got to Oscar’s apartment that evening. She’d arranged the meeting to check out the success or otherwise of the Lone Ranger bugging. It was also an opportunity to put a call in to Ted Saddler in Kolkata to share news with him. Oscar had advised – strongly – that she make no calls or emails from her office. Or indeed from her apartment. Before Monday Erin would have rubbished such fancies, until Oscar had shown her how easy it was to turn her phone and every other internet-enabled device in her apartment into listening and recording facilities. Erin had begun to be afraid of the dark. She told him about José

  ‘. . . but what’s worse is that I chatted with José just last week.’

  She told Oscar about Veronica’s call to José just a few days before.

  ‘This is beginning to sound a little more severe than spreading nasty stories, my dear.’

  ‘Don’t say it! I can’t – won’t believe my boss is a . . .’

  ‘Murderer? If you say so, my dear.’ Oscar drawled. ‘We won’t jump to any naughty conclusions now, will we? We’ll take it at face value. I mean some of my best friends – how shall we put it? – have some very interesting ways of getting their rocks off, my dear. Pal José is not alone, let me tell you. But it is a teensy bit coincidental to have two misfortunes in two days. Not that Mrs Yeardon’s headless body has been found yet.’

  His enlarged eyes opened wider in lurid speculation. Erin jammed fingers in her ears and closed her eyes. Then she took her hands down and looked at Oscar.

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Why, nothing. Nothing except listen and watch. Come sit by me, my dear.’

  Oscar pulled out a stool on wheels from under the bench that held part of the array of computer boxes and screens. He patted it. Erin got up out of her deep armchair and gingerly sat alongside Oscar. She could smell a faint but not unpleasant aroma of lavender.

  ‘Shall we see how clever you were? And how clever my little Trojan horse is? Don’t you love it? The Lone Ranger on his Trojan horse? It’s the laughs that keep us going, don’t you think?’

  Erin smiled dutifully and admired Oscar’s command of the keyboards. He had not been exaggerating about his magic fingers. He was working two keyboards at once, like a piano virtuoso. In front of him was a large split screen with rapidly changing menus, and instructions being submitted and processed. At last he slowed down and both hands came to rest on one set of keys. A now familiar figure appeared on screen.

  ‘How well acquainted are you with our hero?’ he asked, without turning his head.

  ‘Johnny Depp made a very bad movie of him based on a silly kids’ programme from the 50s.’

  ‘Not kids! It was too good for kids,’ said Oscar, fast forwarding the compliant cowboy through a series of actions till he again paused. ‘And don’t diss Johnny in front of Albert,’ he whispered.

  He turned to her and pointed at his screens.

  ‘You’ve done good, girl. Welcome to the dark side. Your office has desktops and tablets and cell phones linked by Wi-Fi and sharing central applications running on your company cloud. Each machine has a few client apps running locally including your individual voice-response systems. So does everybody else.’

  He went on. ‘My gizmo gets past the firewalls into the servers. It turns every workstation, every phone and tablet into a listening and viewing post. I can read your email, Word docs and Excel sheets. I can call up your family albums, and even watch your screen while you use it. Lovely. . . And what’s specially nice, is what I’ve done to the voice app. It still works for you and your pals, but it also works for me now! The mikes have been ‘turned’. We can tune into anyone’s computer and hear conversations or phone calls or people talking to themselves – I hope you don’t have any funny little habits when you’re alone, Erin?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ She sat up straight, knowing her cheeks were calling out her lie. Twice – just twice in three years – out of nowhere, a simple need burst into her head, an itch that wouldn’t stop. It took over her body, like an alien. If a man had touched her then she’d have consumed him. Behind her big official desk and with the rest of the executive team and her PA just a wall’s breadth away, she slid a hand down her skirt and brought blessed relief. But not a sound passed her clamped lips. Only her voice, after, might have given her away.

  ‘Just checking. It’s surprising what we all do when we think we’re alone. Shall we see?’ There was more than a hint of malicious glee in his face and voice.

  ‘You mean you’ve recorded all that’s been going on in all the exec offices since the weekend?’

  ‘See that little rack over there?’ He pointed to a tall framework of metal uprights and crossbars in which a large number of bare computer innards were displayed. ‘It can hold a thousand years’ recordings
for the dozen or so folk we’re dealing with here.’

  ‘Could we listen to yesterday afternoon? In Warwick’s office?’

  ‘Oh yes. Oh my word, yes.’ Oscar brought his fingers across the keys once, twice and then sat back with Erin to listen.

  Warwick’s voice filled the room and Erin covered her mouth, her eyes wide.

  ‘Sorry! Too loud.’

  He turned Warwick’s voice down to its normal threatening level. They listened as he held intercom discussions with Pat Duschene, his executive assistant. Pat had been with Warwick for longer than any of his three wives. He made calls to other banks and businesses. He had one outburst with the head of the Forex desk in New York after summoning him from the floor. The Euro had taken off and GA hadn’t hedged it enough. Erin shuddered. There were also long silences punctuated by occasional bursts of voice from one of Erin’s colleagues.

  Just then she heard her own distinctive tones. She rose out of her chair and stood in terror gazing at the screen.

  ‘What the hell’s going on, Oscar? What are we listening to?’

  She listened to herself talking to Madge. She remembered the moment, just after two o’clock. She had a short gap in her meeting schedule and queried if Warwick had tried to get hold of her at any stage. They talked for a couple of minutes with Erin making less than polite comments about how nice it would be to pass a whole day without hearing from her boss.

  ‘What are you doing in my office?!’

  Oscar paused the recording. He turned to her with pressed lips.

  ‘I’m not in yours. Warwick is. He’s bugged all your rooms. Probably video and voice. Like us. My guess is that it’s a clever little app to pick up particular key words. So maybe if I were a paranoiac, control freak of a chief executive I’d set it up to let me know whenever my name was used. Just in case anyone was saying anything disloyal, you know?’

  ‘Oh my god. I’m dead. I’ve called him terrible things over the last year. God knows what I’ve said!’

  ‘Relax, my dear. He may be paranoiac but he’s not stupid. He’s smart enough to know that when the troops are saying nothing about the general then he’s really got problems.’

  Erin sat down. ‘Right. Yes.’ There was no conviction in her voice. ‘So we’re sitting here, tapping him, tapping me? How on earth am I supposed to act normal from now on? I mean for God’s sake it’ll feel like I’m on stage. He’ll know I’m acting!’

  ‘Well he’d just better not, is my advice.’ Oscar peered hard at her. ‘Shall we continue?’

  They listened as the crisis over José Cadenza emerged. Oscar skipped through passages that were uninteresting. Throughout, Stanstead flitted from being the caricature of Mr Angry to being the very model of an efficient and caring manager. The time marched on and it was late evening. The screen clock showed it was 9.30 pm and it seemed Warwick was on the point of leaving. But one last call was made.

  ‘Joey?’ Oscar asked, pausing the recording.

  ‘Joey Kutzov. Warwick’s Mr Fixit,’ Erin wondered why she was whispering. ‘A very smooth operator. No-one ever quite knows what Joey actually does. Been with Warwick for years.’

  Oscar released the pause. A new voice cut in.

  ‘Mr Stanstead. How are things?’

  ‘Pretty good, Joey. We had a lot of excitement around here this afternoon.’

  ‘Absolutely Mr Stanstead. Any problems, or did it go as we thought?’

  ‘Exactly as planned. Tears and incredulity. They’ll do a check on his office here and in Rio of course.’

  ‘That’s all taken care of. It all fits.’

  ‘Have you found the Yeardon documents?’

  ‘She’s not being helpful.’

  ‘She never was. Keep me posted if things change.’

  The conversation stopped. They looked at each other, Oscar with a sardonic, what-do-you-expect expression, Erin with a white face, frozen between terror and disbelief. The façade crumbled. Erin Wishart gulped until she found her voice.

  ‘Let’s call Ted, shall we?’

  TWENTY ONE

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about your meeting with Cadenza?’

  Ted was pacing his room in the Oberoi with a Skyped cell phone in one hand and a whiskey in the other. As agreed with Erin, he’d bought a new cell at Kolkata airport and a handful of pay-as-you-go SIM cards. The line to Erin and Oscar in New York was now clear after a couple of tries. Unfortunately. He didn’t want to believe what she was telling him. He shivered. The air conditioning seemed set at Arctic levels compared with the tropical heat at Ramesh’s bank.

  ‘Don’t tell me off, Mister! I was waiting till he’d met Mrs Yeardon. Waiting till there was something to tell you.’

  ‘Oh pardon me, I thought this was just a regular story of banking chicanery. Not murder.’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure.’

  Even from 5000 miles away her voice sounded less than convincing.

  ‘Really? We’ve got a taped phone call – thanks to Oscar’s box of tricks – that shows Stanstead and Joey Kutzov knew about José before it happened. And they could be involved in Mrs Yeardon’s disappearance. There’s no other way of reading it.’

  ‘It’s not 100%. Wait. Oscar is sending it now. Check your email.’

  Ted put the phone on speaker and turned to his laptop. He found the emailed clip and played the conversation between Stanstead and his fixer. He aimed at the cell phone.

  ‘It might not convince a Grand Jury, but it’s good enough for me. Is there any way Stanstead would know you bumped into Cadenza?’

  ‘A week ago I would have said impossible. Now. . .’

  ‘Can you take some vacation time, Erin?’

  ‘Are you seriously suggesting I should go on the run? Why not send this to the police?’

  Oscar’s dulcet tones joined in. ‘Illegal phone tapping? They’d love that. I agree with Ted. I think you should disappear, Erin. Soon. Of your own accord.’

  Ted chimed in. ‘If you’re worried, Oscar, then we should all worry. Any suggestions?’

  ‘Before we get to that – Erin, dear, there’s nothing to trace anything to me, is there? I mean you have been careful in coming here, haven’t you? Lots of diversions and changes of cabs and such like?’ There was a pause.

  ‘Seems like we’re going to have to teach you a few tricks before we send you off into the woods. And I’d better check my ass! Meantime, let’s spirit this young lady away. Maybe back to one of her cosy bases in Asia Pacific. Sydney’s nice this time of year. Then we continue with our surveillance.’

  Erin’s voice cut in. ‘If you boys are quite finished deciding what’s best for me? I’m already booked to fly back to Hong Kong tomorrow. It’s my regional HQ. I’ll stick with that – officially - but hop on the next flight out of there.’

  ‘Where to, Erin?’ asked Ted.

  ‘Kolkata of course. Direct flight from HK. Four and half hours.’

  ‘You mean, here?!’

  The last thing Ted needed was a high-powered, organising broad on his case and running his life. He knew exactly how she’d operate; interfering, pushing, arguing, making him feel slow and old. Digs about his drinking.

  ‘It’s no picnic, Erin. This is the hottest time of the year. . .’

  He trailed away, glad he hadn’t set up the pc cam to show just how tough he was finding it, glass in hand.

  ‘. . . but then you know that.’

  ‘They have aircon last I looked.’

  He tried again. ‘Well, it’s going to be pretty boring. I’ve done the main interview, and now all that’s left is sitting through the first couple of weeks of a trial. You can imagine the pace of an Indian court.’

  ‘You do the court stuff. I’ll talk to Ramesh Banerjee. Banker to banker. There’s more to find out. And I’ll be a long way from Joey Kutzov and his gang. I’ll be with you in, say, 36 hours. Stay where you are.’

  Was she confining him to his room?

  ‘Let me know your flight. I’ll boo
k a room for you. In the meantime, Oscar?’

  ‘Yes, Ted?’

  ‘Can you hook me up with what else is coming through from GA?’

  ‘Already done. I’ve set up a secure web site. I’ll filter out the garbage and dump all the goodies – documents and audio - on to the site. I’ll text you an encrypted password. Then you should swap SIMs. How’s that?’

  ‘Agreed. So, Erin, keep your head down and get the hell out of town as fast as you can. Right? Good luck people. And Oscar. . . thanks. I’m sorry it’s been so long. . .’ Ted stuttered to an embarrassing halt.

  ‘That’s alright Mr Pulitzer. Just don’t let it happen again. And you still owe me dinner at a restaurant of my choice. I’m told the Jules Verne has wonderful views of Paris. Have fun out there. Ciao.’

  They disconnected, and a middle-aged, over-weight man, who’d seen too much and felt too little, sat back on the bed thinking about blue eyes and gym membership.

  TWENTY TWO

  It was a long night for Anila, full of terrible dreams. She was exhausted but couldn’t sleep. When the first light brushed the hut and softened the darkness of her room, she lay quiet, thinking about her life. She looked over at her daughter Aastha, soundless on her cot. Only a small billowing of her chest confirmed she was alive. Aastha was more precious to Anila than her own life. She wanted something better for her. A husband who would be kind to her, not like the man forced on her.

  Dilip had his mother’s looks and her conceits. They shared the same puffy face and sallow skin. Their small hands – which were frequently entwined – were cut from the same roll of dough. Their eyebrows were continuations of each other’s. His mother was forever touching him and stroking him, and placing sweets in his mouth.

  Her wedding night had been worse than she’d feared. Dilip had been a grunting thoughtless fish on top of her, his skin sweaty and yielding. Mercifully it had been as short as it was brutal. It had set the pattern for a nightly agony that left her nauseous and unfulfilled. Despite the perfunctory process, she’d found herself pregnant within three months.