Never Apologise, Never Explain - James Craig [50]
‘Lucky boy,’ Carlyle leered, looking the woman up and down. Thin, pasty-faced, wearing a red T-shirt and green combat pants, she could have been anywhere from eighteen to thirty-eight. It struck him that she looked like a weedy heroine from one of those wretched Mike Leigh movies that Helen sometimes made him watch; boring people pissing about masquerading as ‘social realism’.
The woman ignored his sarcastic tone. ‘Dismas was the Penitent Thief, a friend of Jesus.’
‘Good for him,’ Carlyle said, not having the remotest clue what she was talking about. Dismas could have been a character on Sesame Street for all he knew. Or Fulham’s new Hungarian left-back. He held out his right hand. ‘Give me the camera.’
The woman immediately lifted the machine back to her face and resumed filming. ‘We have a perfect right to be here. Are you arresting Clive?’
Carlyle glanced over at Joe, who was standing in the doorway trying not to laugh. Turning back to the woman, he said, ‘Give me the camera,’ as calmly as he could manage. ‘Please.’
Hemmed in by her boyfriend, the woman kicked Carlyle in the shin.
Instinctively, Carlyle kicked her back.
‘Ouch!’ she squealed. ‘That hurt!’
Without waiting for her to start screaming about ‘police brutality’, Carlyle grabbed the camera and quickly tossed it to Joe. ‘You are under arrest,’ he said, spinning her round and snapping on a pair of cuffs, ‘for breach of the peace and assaulting a police officer.’ He pointed at the boyfriend. ‘That goes for you too, Stuart.’
‘Boss,’ said Joe from behind him, ‘the uniforms are here.’
‘Good. Tell ’em to take these two and the driver back to the station and we’ll get them charged. And get someone out here to move this bloody bus.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘What about my camera?’ the woman whined.
‘That’s evidence, love,’ said Joe, smiling. ‘But don’t worry – we’ll look after it.’
SIXTEEN
Today I write not to gloat. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.
Commander Carole Simpson dropped the letter on to her desk and sighed. Why her ‘genius’ fund manager husband had decided to write a ‘fuck you’ letter to the world in general and to his clients in particular, was beyond her. Simpson had never quite understood how her husband, Joshua Hunt, had transformed himself from the rather geeky Imperial College computer scientist that she had married into a financial guru with an estimated net worth – so she read in the papers – of almost £120 million. For a long time, she had taken comfort in the belief that the 4,000 square-foot house in Highgate, the expensive restaurants, the needy clients and the political networking had not turned Joshua into a completely different person, robbing her of what she had seen in him in the first place. Now, however, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe the money had finally gone to his head.
Joshua Hunt’s company, McGowan Capital, had run four of the best performing investment funds in London for each of the last six years. In the last two years, as the world’s financial markets had imploded, he had made an incredible 723 per cent return, mostly from betting against bank stocks and sterling. However, he had taken a beating in the last quarter, calling the oil market wrong, and was finding it harder and harder to convince his clients that this was not the time that they should be pulling out their money.
Sitting at the kitchen table a couple of weeks earlier, he had told her that he was shutting down the firm. He wanted to retire. Retire to what? He didn’t know. Still, that was fine by her – Joshua had never been the type of man who had allowed himself to be defined by his work. But now he had written this goodbye letter. That worried her. Glossing over recent losses, it smacked of hubris.
What I have learned about the investment business is that I hate it. I was in the game simply for the money. The low-hanging fruit – the idiots whose parents paid for public school and then the MBA – was there for the taking. These people were truly not worthy of everything they received as they rose effortlessly