At the Law Centre, Butcher saw him straight away, which had to mean something. She said, "When I got in this morning my fax had spewed out a lot of stuff about the Royal Hoo." "Yeah, I gave Porphyry your number." "You not got a fax of your own, Sixsmith?" "Course I have. Only it doesn't work too good." Merv Golightly, who'd been present in Joe's office when the machine churned out fifty pages of midnight blackness, had said, "Joe, whoever sold you that fax got the vowel wrong. Why didn't you come to me? I know this guy who's going bankrupt…" "In any case," Joe went on to Butcher, "this was stuff you wanted to look at." "Which I've done. Have to say that when old Porphyry set up the club, he really tied up the loose ends so the family kept control."
"You're not going to start talking all that legal mumbo-jumbo to me, Butcher?" said Joe fearfully.
"No, Joe. I'll give you the idiot child's version," she said. "Grandpapa Porphyry got his lawyers to tie up the business side of things. Members are shareholders, with the current head of the Porphyry family the majority shareholder. Any shares owned by ordinary members-that is, members other than said Porphyry- are non-transferable. They cannot be sold outside the club or inherited. On the death of a member, his share reverts to the club, where it remains in a share-pool till such time as a new member is elected who must purchase his qualifying share at its current market value, which, as there is no market, is decided by a small committee known as the Prop, which is short for Proportionality. You still with me?"
"I was till this last bit," said Joe.
"Do pay attention. The intention is that new members should be chosen for their clubability not their wealth, and charged not on a fixed scale but according to what they can afford to pay."
"Got you!" said Joe. "You mean like if I got elected, they'd say, Welcome aboard, Joe, you're such a nice guy we really want you here at the Hoo. Here's your membership share, that will be a fiver please. Whereas if Sir Monty Wright had got elected it would have cost him half a mill maybe."
"You're doing well," said Butcher approvingly. "But don't get your hopes up; there's an annual fee that you could probably afford, only you wouldn't be able to eat, drink, pay your rent, or buy new clothes, which in your case might not be such a bad thing."
"You ain't no fashion plate yourself," retorted Joe. "So OK, everything's neat and tidy, that what you got me here to tell?"
"More or less. But what one lawyer puts away neat and tidy another lawyer can usually find a way to muss up, if he or she puts her mind to it. If at any time there should be more than four membership shares floating around this pool-because, say, the Almighty decided He'd had enough of these privileged prats sunning themselves on their exclusive terrace and took a lot of them out with one of His thunderbolts-in that case members are allowed to buy extra shares which they can hold in trust for any future member they themselves may care to propose, the advantage of this being that in such a case such a proposition would be decided by simple majority without option of blackball."
"Now I'm starting to hurt," said Joe. "Why?"
"To keep numbers up, I suspect. And also because grandpapa Porphyry didn't trust his friends not to become such a complacent, snobbish, coterie-forming bunch of twats that they'd end up blackballing the club out of existence."
"Butcher, I got a plane to catch," said Joe looking at his watch. "And if I don't catch it, I'm going to have to explain myself to King Rat. I'm already running late, so can we cut to the chase here?"
"OK. Termination of membership. Possible reasons: death, resignation, expulsion. In each and all of these cases, the membership shares go into the pool. Possible reasons for expulsion: anything that in the judgment of the Committee is deemed to have brought the club into disrepute. So, a judgment call, except in one particular instance. There is one crime regarded as heinous beyond all mitigation of circumstance or misfortune. If a man is found to have cheated at golf, the penalty is instant expulsion, without debate or appeal."
Finally Joe was starting to see where Butcher was going.
"So if Mr. Porphyry was found guilty, he'd be chucked out and his shares would go into this pool thing? But I mean, it's his club, or at least it's his family's club-"
"Wrong," said Butcher. "The club belongs to the shareholders who are the members. The fact that there is a majority shareholder who calls the shots is immaterial. This is where Granpapa Porphyry's neat and tidy arrangements fall down. I'm sure he was sufficiently a realist to know that nothing lasts for ever. Everything changes. It might even be that eventually he would have a descendant who didn't care for golf and wanted to realize this particular asset. That would be fine, a matter of commercial choice. What he didn't envisage was that one of his descendants could be caught cheating at the game and expelled from the Hoo."
"And this means all of Mr. Porphyry's shares go into this pool? And the other members can buy them up? Shoot, Butcher, would someone really do this to a nice guy like Christian just so they can get one of their chums into the Hoo without risk of blackball?"
The lawyer looked at him in amazement then began to laugh.
"Joe, Joe," she said. "This isn't about membership of a stupid golf club, it's not about blackballing-though I've a strong suspicion that a blackball is where it all started. The point is that if one guy or a group of like-minded guys get their hands on Porphyry's shares, then they'll have a majority holding and they can do with the club whatever they damn well like."
"Such as?"
"Such as apply for development permission, which with the right connections isn't too hard to obtain. God, the properties already scattered around the Hoo site must be worth millions on the open market. As for development, think what an expanding supermarket chain might be willing to pay for a chunk of that land!"
"You mean, Wright-Price? Sir Monty?" said Joe aghast. "You saying Sir Monty's set this thing up just to get his own back 'cos he thinks Christian blackballed him?"
"I think that getting Porphyry disgraced at the same time as adding a lot more dosh to his already obscene bank balance would be an irresistible combination to that nasty bastard," snapped Butcher. "And don't give me any sentimental crap about his charitable works and all the good he's done that sad football club of yours. When you see a smile on the face of the tiger, you need to ask yourself what it's been eating!"
Joe didn't argue-with Butcher in full spate, argument was futile-but he couldn't agree. OK, Sir Monty was sharp. You didn't get to be a multi-millionaire without cutting corners. But when it came to sporting morality, the Luton chairman made Aunt Mirabelle look like an estate agent. He thought one of City's players was diving, that got a t ast-chance warning. One more dive and it didn't matter if you were a full international and player of the year, you were out! How could a guy like that be mixed up in framing a fellow golfer for cheating?
Joe's head was in a whirl. From an objective, professional point of view, his investigation had made great strides forward, but he wished with all his heart he'd somehow managed to catch that early flight to Spain with Mimi.
Which reminded him. He glanced at his watch and began to rise.
"Where are you going?" demanded Butcher.
"The airport, I told you-"
"Sixsmith, you are unbelievable! Haven't you been listening to me? I've laid it out for you why I think your client's been set up! And if I'm right and this all leads back to Sir Monty bloody Wright, ask yourself who helped him get where he is today. Ratcliffe King, that's who, the man who's fixed it to get you out of the country. And all you can do on hearing this is rush off to the airport to make sure he's not disappointed!"
Joe said, "Sounds a pretty healthy option to me. In fact, only last night you were telling me that I'd be mad to cross King Rat once I'd made a deal with him."
"So when have I expressed belief in your sanity? You've got responsibilities to your client here, Joe."
"Yeah? Well, Mr. King's a client too. His job's urgent. The golf-club thing ain't. I mean, this committee won't be considering Porphyry's case for another couple of weeks, and I'll be back long before then."
"I'd bet Christian Porphyry's thinking it's a bit more urgent today," said Butcher. "You've not seen the Crier?"
She produced a copy of the tabloid which appealed to those local readers who found the Bugle too intellectual. Under the headline STORM IN A TEE CUP? was a brief account of the cheating accusations leveled at Porphyry. Joe could almost hear the glee in the last sentences: Only a week ago the engagement was announced (though not in the Crier's classifieds!) of Mr. Porphyry to Tiff, only daughter of Bruce Emerson, proprietor of the South Bedfordshire Bugle. We look forward to following the affair in the Bugle's pages.
"Shoot," said Joe defiantly. "That's rough, but it doesn't change things. Anyway, looks like you're making a lot more progress than I've managed. You take over, why don't you? Speed you work, you could have it all sorted by the time I get back."
Butcher banged her tiny fist on her desk, toppling several piles of paper.
"Bullshit!" she cried. "You're running away, that's what you're doing! Never thought I'd hear myself say this, but there are things you can do far better than me. I'm good at this stuff"-she gave the confusion of papers on her desk a further violent shuffle-"but it's not this stuff that's going to get things sorted, not without a lot more evidence. That's your job, Joe. The dirty nails, hands-on work. You're doing well, you're doing things right, otherwise they wouldn't want to be rid of you. So sit that well-upholstered backside of yours down and tell me what you've got, all of it, and let's try to work out how we can stymie these bastards!"
Joe, shaken more than he cared to admit by the onslaught, shook his head, as much to clear it as in denial. For once what Butcher was saying seemed to accord with Endo Venera's advice, go with the garbage, meaning in the lawyer's case that this was all he was good for.
He said. "I gotta get out of here."
"You're going to Spain then?" she said disbelievingly.
"Didn't say that. What I mean is, I got to get away from here. From you. Need a bit of time to think. My brain don't work like yours, Butcher. You see things in a tangle, then you see them clear. Me, I need to be picking and unpicking till I work out what I've got."
He expected another outburst. Instead the little lawyer came round the desk and gave him a hug and her soft-spoken words sounded remarkably like an apology.
"You're right, Joe. That's your way and it's a good way. For you it's the only way, which means it's the best way. You get it sorted in your mind then give me a ring, OK? I'm sorry I yelled at you."
This was like Aunt Mirabelle jumping on the bar at the Supporters' Club and leading a chorus of "I'm a-rootin' for Luton," the club song. It was time to get out before she asked him to marry her.
He said, "That's fine. Didn't notice. Really. I'll be in touch, yeah?"
He hurried out to the Morris and drove away. His mind was in a turmoil. He knew he had decisions to make and he'd no idea how to set about making them.
It wasn't till a couple of minutes later he realized he was heading for Rasselas.
He relaxed behind the wheel and felt his mind clearing like a freshly poured bottle of pils. This was the way it often happened. Somewhere deep inside there was something that made important decisions affecting his well-being, then let him know at its own sweet leisure. Bit like the NHS. King Rat wasn't going to be happy when he found out. Well, that was tough. But lovely little Mimi deserved an explanation.
After he parked at the tower block he dug her number out of the green folder and punched it in as he went up into the building. The lift was on the seventh floor. He summoned it down as Mimi's voice said, "Hi!" in his ear.
"Mimi, it's me, Joe," he said. "Look, I'm really sorry, but I'm not going to make it."
"Surprise!" she said with that gurgling laugh that made a guy feel real good. "Shame. It's lovely here."
"Listen, I don't want you to get into trouble. I'll ring Mr. King and explain-"
"No need. I've just had Ratcliffe on the line. Wanted to know why I hadn't told him you were still in Luton."
"Shoot! I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do-?"
"Nothing, thanks all the same. He fired me."
"What? That's terrible! Mimi, I'm-"
"Hold it there, Joe. It's OK. I've been looking for an easy escape route for a while now and they don't come any easier than getting sacked."
"But what will you do?" said Joe, still guilt ridden. "I mean, without a job… and what about money…?"
"Well, first I'll finish my margarita, then I'll do some serious work on my tan. That should take three or four days. Meanwhile I'll get back to the three or four guys who've been dangling tempting job offers in front of me for the past six months and decide if there's anything there I fancy. As for money, well, when I saw you this morning I said to myself, I don't think this guy is serious about coming to Spain. So I took the precaution of paying for my hotel room in advance with the company credit card before the Rat put a stop on it. Oh, and I hit a couple of money machines and got myself a whole hatful of euros too. So I'm fine. Hope you will be too, Joe."
"Any reason I shouldn't be?"
"I don't know why Ratcliffe wanted you in Spain, Joe, but I do know he doesn't much care for not getting what he wants. You see Stephen Hardman coming toward you, better turn and run! In fact, maybe a little holiday abroad wouldn't be such a bad idea."
"I'll think about it. Mimi, something you can maybe help me with. Mr. King used to be in close cahoots with Sir Monty Wright. They got anything going lately?"
There was a silence long enough to get Joe apologizing again.
"Look, sorry, shouldn't have asked. Even though he's your ex-employer, I know you can't go mouthing off about your work there…"
"No, I was just thinking. In fact, I never had any dealings with Wright-Price. No reason to, Ratcliffe was just a non-exec director, nothing hands on. But he has spent a lot of phone time talking to Sir Monty lately, don't know what about. Could be just exchanging recipes. That it, Joe? The ice is melting in my margarita."
"Yeah. And thanks for being such a sport."
"No sweat. Like I say, I was ready for fresh fields and pastures new. Take care, Joe."
"No, hold on," said Joe. He rarely got flashes of inspiration but sometimes a trigger could produce a flash. "Pastures new, I mean New Pastures-you ever hear of an outfit with that name?"
"Yes. How do you know about them, Joe? It's a land-holding company that Ratcliffe set up a couple of months back."
"Thanks, Mimi. See you around, maybe."
"Hope so, Joe. Bye."
The lift had arrived and Joe had stuck his foot in the door to hold it there. He now stepped inside. As the door closed he saw the swing doors of the main entrance begin to open. His first instinct was to hold the lift for the newcomer. Then he saw who it was.
Jurassic George.
"Oh shoot!" cried Joe and hit the 7 button. Fortunately though a long way from the smooth swift sweet-smelling elevator in ProtoVision House, the lifts on Rasselas were just as far removed from the mechanically and physically dangerous mobile urinals you found on Hermsprong.
The door closed. The ascent began. Not even a super athlete could make it up seven flights of stairs as fast as the lift, but Joe still sprinted down the corridor. Once in his flat he locked and bolted the door. The security chain dangled uselessly from the woodwork. Joe grabbed a stout dining chair and wedged it under the handle.
"There," said Joe. "Let's see you get through that!"
Breathing deeply he opened the balcony window to get some air. Below him Luton slumbered in the heat. It was good slumbering weather, specially if you were lying beside a pool with some like Mimi…
Beryl… he corrected guiltily. He meant someone like Beryl…
In Aunt Mirabelle's strict theology, even a fantasized infidelity deserves punishment, so she might have been unsurprised by what happened next, but Joe was figuratively as well as literally bowled over when he felt himself hit from behind and flung forward against the balcony railing.
Whoever said lightning never struck twice clearly didn't know Jurassic George!
For the second time that day Joe found himself staring down at the area of paving seven floors below which was likely to be the last resting place of his scattered brains.
One part of his mind was thinking, no misnomer calling George lightning, speed he'd got here. The guy couldn't be human!
But the other and larger part, that devoted to self-interest and survival, was instructing his voice to scream, "George, George, my man, no need for this, I thought we got it all settled, you seen my girl, you seen my Beryl, I got eyes for nobody else, man!"
In view of his recent lascivious fantasy about Mimi, this wasn't strictly true, but while Jurassic might have superhuman physical powers, not all the hard training in the world could make him telepathic.
The one improvement on his earlier experience was that this time, rather than being dangled over the balcony, he was folded across the rail on his stomach and he had instinctively taken a vice-like grip of the metal bar. Also his attacker seemed more interested in dragging him back than pushing him over; but as his preferred method of doing this was to heave at Joe's personal parts while simultaneously punching him in the kidneys, it did not appear that his motives were altogether benevolent, and now Joe found himself hanging on to prevent being dumped on the balcony floor rather then being dropped to the entrance paving stones.
The hand between his legs twisted viciously, and Joe, who'd always envied the ability of the solo tenor in the Boyling Corner Chapel Choir to soar effortlessly toward his top-C's, now found himself hitting notes even a coloratura soprano might have balked at. Just as the agony brought him to the point of fainting, there was some kind of disturbance behind him and suddenly the grip on his testicles relaxed. But this blessed relief seemed likely to be counterproductive. Weakened and barely conscious, he slumped over the rail like a sack of potatoes and hardly registered that gravity was pulling him inexorably down toward the waiting paving stone.
Too late he recognized his peril. His fingers clawed once more at the balcony railings but he could draw on no strength to get a grip. Then he was falling… falling…
Then something grasped his legs and dragged him upward and backward and bore him through the balcony door and deposited him on his own sofa.
He opened his eyes, blinking away the tears that the pain had started there, and as his sight cleared he saw looming over him the terrifying features of Jurassic George.
Now to the sound range that he'd never expected to reach was added a whimper. He would have declared with some force that whatever else he might be he wasn't the whimpering type, but there was no other word to describe the noise he heard himself make in anticipation of George's renewed assault.
And now that monstrous face was coming closer, so close that he could feel the hot breath as the boxer uttered words Joe could not understand but which he knew must be his death knell.