9

Willoughby Blake and Michael Stevens were in a taxi on their way to dine in a favourite haunt of Willoughby’s. They were discussing Dukie Brown. After the publicity of his release, Willoughby said, he had started well enough but interest had now waned. Brown himself was the reason. ‘Too moody, too erratic. Sometimes he goes well; at other times, not a spark and the show’s a flop. The word’s got round you never know how he’ll do and it’s a risk booking him.’

‘He needs time,’ Stevens replied. ‘Three years is a long time away.’

Willoughby grunted. ‘I’m sending him overseas. If he refuses, I’m through.’

Stevens had looked after Dukie for a long time, ever since he’d got him off the murder rap, and had visited him during the years in prison. He was fond of Dukie but he wouldn’t argue. If Willoughby Blake was going to chuck Dukie, there was nothing he could do.

In the restaurant, Willoughby ordered a grouse, roasted, very under-done, and a bottle of Château Pichon Longueville 1976. Stevens ordered a grilled sole, declined the wine and drank Perrier. As Willoughby ate, he gossiped happily about some of his more notorious clients. When he had pushed aside the cadaver of his grouse and ordered coffee, he took out a cigar. He put a match to it, carefully examining the end to make sure it was properly lit. A plume of blue smoke floated up above his head.

‘Now, about young Sarah Wilson.’ Then he corrected himself. ‘No, not Sarah Wilson. Fleur Caverel. That’s her name and that’s what we call her. Miss Fleur Caverel, heiress to the Caverel estates and barony.’ Stevens nodded. ‘This is big, Michael, very big.’ Stevens sipped his coffee, watching Blake over the rim of the cup. ‘I’ve had a call from Jameson. He’s located the grandmother in BA, and he’s bringing her to London. She’ll acknowledge Fleur Caverel as her granddaughter.’

‘But they haven’t met.’

Willoughby winked. ‘A photograph, Michael, she’s been shown a photograph, a true likeness of her long lost granddaughter. But Jameson says the old girl will need watching. She has a taste for vodka.’ Willoughby knocked the ash from his cigar. ‘Like her as a house guest, Michael, to save on costs?’ He laughed happily. ‘Don’t worry, I intend to roll out the red carpet and put the old dear into an hotel. She’s Fleur Caverel’s little grandma who has crossed the ocean to be beside the long lost heiress, and she’s going to be looked after.’

‘Will she make a good witness in court? That’s all that matters.’

‘That’s up to you, Michael. You’re in charge of the law. My job is to assemble the cast – and prepare the public.’

He signalled to the waiter and ordered brandy. ‘But there is someone around who we do not need,’ he went on. Stevens knew who he meant. ‘Paul Valerian. We must get rid of him.’

‘How can we? I know he’s not very prepossessing –’

‘Prepossessing! There’s the lawyer for you. He’s fat, he’s ugly, he can hardly speak the Queen’s English and he looks a villain. If he’s around when we produce her, he’ll do immense damage.’

‘He’s the client. Or rather, they are the clients. It’s their case. He found me. He came to me.’

‘And you did very well, old son, by coming to me. But I want the Pole out. He must go. He has some hold over that girl. It’s not good, it’s not healthy. He’s a Svengali. We’ve got to get her away from him – and quickly.’

‘She’s with him now in Paddington. She won’t leave him. She trusts him. She’s his friend.’

‘But not, I judge, his mistress,’ Willoughby mused. ‘At least no longer, though she may have been at one time in the past.’ He struck the table with the flat of his hand, making the coffee cups rattle. ‘But we can do without Mr Valerian both in the run-up to court and at court. He’s greasy, he stinks of liquor and he looks a crook whether he is one or isn’t. The family lawyers would have a field-day with him – not to mention the press.’

‘How do we get rid of him?’

‘Pay him off, tell him he’s harming her chances by staying around. From now on this is our show, Michael, and that’s the way it’s got to stay.’

Your show, you mean, Stevens thought. You and your people have taken it over.

‘He’ll want a lot of money,’ he said. ‘He believes the family will negotiate a settlement.’

‘Will they?’

‘How can they? They might pay a little to get her to go away if she will irrevocably renounce her claim, to rid themselves of a nuisance. But it wouldn’t be enough for him. It’ll end in a court case, and he’ll be beside her when it does.’

‘If we’re to succeed, he has to be eliminated. Get him to your office, promise him a share. Tell him we’re all more likely to get something if he clears off.’

‘And if he refuses?’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Talk to him. See how he takes it. I suppose that in the life she was leading, she had to have someone to look after her, but it’s odd she chose someone so repulsive.’ Willoughby looked amusedly at Stevens. ‘Now if it had been you, Michael, I could understand.’

Stevens, embarrassed, drank from his coffee cup.

‘Thinking of trying your luck with her yourself, Michael?’

‘Of course not.’

Michael Stevens lived an impeccable existence in an expensive villa in north London with his plump, serious wife and two earnest children.

‘Just pulling your leg, old son. Have you had any reaction from the family?’

‘No, and I didn’t expect to, not yet. I’ll hear in a few days. I have to give them time.’

‘No, old cock, you do not have to give them time. Call their lawyers tomorrow and tell them to reply pronto or we go public.’

‘What do you mean, go public?’

‘I mean that I intend very shortly to introduce the lost heiress to the Great British Public. The time has come for us to launch her and to help us along, we need public opinion on her side.’

‘It will be for a court to decide, a judge will decide, not the public.’

‘Don’t underestimate the GBP, Michael, and the effect of public opinion, even upon such unimpeachable characters as Her Majesty’s judges. They won’t say so. They can’t show it, but they’ll feel it, provided public opinion is properly targeted. They’ll understand. They watch the telly, you know.’

He leaned back in his chair, looking benevolently at Stevens. ‘Have you begun court proceedings?’

‘No, of course not. As I told you, I must wait until I get a reply from the family.’

‘Exactly. So there’s no worry about contempt of court and no objection to telling the little lady’s story to the world. The hacks’ll love it – and love her.’

He again rocked back on the back legs of his chair, his eyes turned up on the smoke from his cigar above his head. ‘And when we tell her story, the toffs’ll be rubbished, you’ll see, rubbished.’ He brought down his chair with a bang and leaned forward. ‘This is big, Michael, bigger than anything you and I have handled before. Think of that estate, the rolling acres, the pictures, the silver, the porcelain, it’s worth a king’s ransom. That young lady’s going to be very, very rich – and so, Michael, are we.’

‘Nothing is hers yet,’ Stevens said. ‘Maybe nothing ever will be.’

‘It will, one day, and that day is not too distant. Then it’ll all be hers – and ours. I know it’ll come to a court case, but before it does I’m going to make sure the world knows all about her – and likes what it hears.’ He wagged his cigar at Stevens. ‘The sympathy factor, old cock, the perception of what’s fair, whether it is or whether it’s not. Beautiful young black barred from barony and fortune by a bunch of toffee-nosed snobs. Can’t you see the headlines? Beautiful, just beautiful. What we have to do at this moment in time, as the pundits say, is to create an image, a politically correct image, of the deprived, snubbed, humble but beautiful young female black, an image so powerful, so sympathetic, so politically correct it might even induce the family to throw in the towel.’

‘They won’t do that.’

‘Perhaps not, but they’ll feel the pressure and it’ll scare them. They won’t be used to it and they won’t like it. Have you ever experienced a rent-a-crowd of hacks outside your home, Michael, with the telephoto lens on the bathroom curtains?’

Stevens played with the spoon of his coffee cup. Willoughby laughed again. ‘No, of course not. But when the Great British Public and the Great British Media learn all about the heiress denied her rights because of her sex and her race, the family may just think again.’

He stubbed out his cigar. ‘I’ve set up a press conference for next week, so whether you’ve heard from the family or not, next week I go public. And when I do, I’ll go public in style.’