Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [272]
“I see.”
The possibilities flew through his head.
“You’re a skilled business lawyer and stockbroker. If you were an idiot you would never have got the jobs you did in the ’80s. However, you behaved like an idiot and managed to get yourself fired.”
He winced.
“In the future I will be your only client.”
She had looked at him with the most ingenuous expression he had ever seen.
“I have two conditions. The first is that you never ever commit a crime or get mixed up in anything that could create problems for us and focus the authorities’ attention on my companies and accounts. The second is that you never lie to me. Never ever. Not a single time. And not for any reason. If you lie to me, our business relationship will terminate instantly, and if you make me cross enough I will ruin you.”
She poured him a glass of wine.
“There’s no reason to lie to me. I already know everything worth knowing about your life. I know how much you make in a good month and a bad month. I know how much you spend. I know that you never really have enough money. I know that you owe £120,000 in both long-term and short-term debts, and that you always have to take risks and skim some money to make the loan payments. You wear expensive clothes and try to keep up appearances, but in reality you’ve gone to the dogs and haven’t bought a new sports jacket in several months. But you did take an old jacket in to have the lining mended two weeks ago. You used to collect rare books but have been gradually selling them off. Last month you sold an early edition of Oliver Twist for £760.”
She stopped talking and fixed him with her gaze. He swallowed hard.
“Last week you actually made a killing. A quite clever fraud perpetrated against that widow you represent. You ripped her off £6,000, which she’ll probably never miss.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I know that you were married, that you have two children in England who don’t want to see you, and that you’ve taken the big leap since your divorce and now have primarily homosexual relationships. You’re probably ashamed of that and avoid the gay clubs, and you avoid being seen in town with any of your male friends. You regularly cross the border into Spain to meet men.”
MacMillan was shaken to the core. And he was suddenly terrified. He had no idea how she had come by all this information, but she knew enough to destroy him.
“And I’m only going to say this one time. I don’t give a shit who you have sex with. It’s none of my business. I want to know who you are, but I will never use what I know. I won’t threaten you or blackmail you.”
MacMillan was no fool. He was perfectly aware, of course, that her knowledge of all that information about him constituted a threat. She was in control. For a moment he had considered picking her up and throwing her over the edge of the terrace, but he restrained himself. He had never in his life been so scared.
“What do you want?” he managed to say.
“I want to have a partnership with you. You will bring to a close all the other business you’re working on and will work exclusively for me. You will make more money from my company than you could ever dream of making any other way.”
She explained what she required him to do, and how she wanted the arrangements to be made.
“I want to be invisible,” she said. “And I want you to take care of my affairs. Everything has to be legitimate. Whatever money I make on my own will not have any connection to our business together.”
“I understand.”
“You have one week to phase out your other clients and put a stop to all your little schemes.”
He also realized that he had been given an offer that would never come round again. He thought about it for sixty seconds and then accepted. He had only one question.