42

Pitt continued under the spotlight of that narrow cavern. His former boss had caught him in an eternal moment.

“I’m beginning to think,” Sep commented, “that you are some type of comedian.”

“Oh yes, I want to join in. Just lying here in bed having the time of my life,” Clive said.

“You’re the butt of this joke. That treacherous, cunning grammar school boy...that grubby boy from one of those dark Yorkshire towns, who should have been selling pet insurance for a living... but was given an opportunity in the City... and suddenly had the world at his feet. Who did you have to thank for that? How did you repay that risky judgement, Pitt?”

The financier paced around that little iron caged bed. He had a broad chest, yet his structure was dwarfish; a pointed-toe gait on thin bowed legs, emphasised by drain-pipe Armani’s. He peeled away to lean into a shadowy corner, glowering for a few moments, observing like a circus trainer with a mangy lion; before skipping back into the spotlight to menace his helpless charge.

“You are not even ashamed of yourself,” Sep argued. “What a self-deceiving piece of valley trash you are, Pitt.”

“How can I be ashamed of what I don’t know? The extreme nature of those events proves that,” Clive argued.

“Is that really the case? Does a man with memory-loss pack his suitcase one bright morning? Can he decide to run away to his mistress? Then does he pack his suitcase on another bright morning - after falling out with this fancy woman - and go and move in with another woman instead? Is that the behaviour of a confused and disorientated individual?”

“Why not?” Pitt retorted, rucking up the bedclothes underneath.

The two bowler hatted investigators shuffled in confusion. They turned to Sep for help who, for all his diminutive stature, was a superpower.

“Let me explain your private life, Pitt,” Winchurch offered, lowering his resonant voice to a whisper, and putting an ironic forefinger to his temple. “Let’s go back and have a look through your diary, shall we?”

“Why are you obsessed with my personal life? How does that relate to the ethics of that deal? It’s nothing but a smoke screen for their actions. The main issue is the behaviour of the fund and of Di Visu... as well as your conduct in a potential scandal,” he added. “Face the facts, Sep. I loved my wife and I still do, if you must know. What further proof do you require?”

“You are the scandal,” Septimus declared. “We all know what happened after the attack on Emmy. You went back alone to Pixie’s place... her flat above a shop in Hampstead. After that you signed the register at a small hotel near to Hyde Park. Next morning you made an early start and ordered a full English breakfast, room service.”

“Come on, Sep, how is all this relevant to my work?” Pitt insisted.

“It highlights your character ... and typical condition of mind,” Septimus argued. There was a waspish quality to his gestures. It seemed as if he wished to strangle Pitt and restrained himself. “You went into a bank and drew out most of the money in a current account. It takes time to close an account altogether, as you obviously realise. I assume you learnt that much on your father’s knee. Obviously these are the desperate actions of a dazed amnesiac.”

“Draw your own conclusions,” Clive said. “I really don’t remember.”

“Is that the fact? Not a single detail? It’s simple to lose trace of one’s past experiences. After all, where are all of our memories stored? The mind is a curious agent. That’s what the doctors tell me, you know. How complete and accurate is anyone’s memory of a year passed?” Sep remarked. For a moment his face fell into a disconsolate mask of bafflement.

“Then how exactly does this incriminate me?” Pitt retorted.

The financier’s mask changed back to rage and his nose came within an inch of the disgraced young banker’s. “Don’t imagine that I could ever forgive you, Pitt.”

“I’m not looking for forgiveness,” Clive said.

Septimus disentangled himself. He cut a pattern of strides like a guardsman in a sentry box. “What charity did you offer my family? Having drawn out the money - much of which belonged to your wife - you rented a small basement flat off Ladbroke Grove. After wrecking people’s lives you decided to live quietly,” Sep recalled. “In fact technically you continue to rent that room, as you paid the lady in advance. My investigative team discovered this bolt hole.”

The team in question swapped satisfied grimaces and leers.

“For me it was a matter of survival... I needed a base,” he considered.

“There was a suit in the wardrobe... just back from a dry clean and press. You were not depriving yourself of creature comforts. There was a bottle of claret on the table... a supply of upmarket television dinners. You were keeping up your reading... in economics and the City. Newly published books, making negative arguments about us,” Winchurch hissed.

“There were some leaks about the deal? Was I the source?” Clive asked.

“You went to read articles in current journals at the British Library,” Sep added, raising his voice. “You were conducting a research project, or rather a campaign. Quite the student.”

“We always believed in self-improvement,” Clive replied.

“The lad did good!” Sep exclaimed hoarsely - he found a temporary hitch within his vocal folds - his stare glittery and watery. “Not only this, but you went out to look for another job. What’s more you soon found one... a consultancy at a rival corporation... after lying about previous employment. I couldn’t keep tabs on all your connections in the City.”

“You can’t expect me to sit about at home, can you, twiddling my bloody thumbs,” Pitt argued.

“The rest of the time you were plotting from Clerkenwell. At least until you left the gas on,” Sep said, alluding the ransacking of Pitt’s office. “You’d take your lunch at the Working Men’s Chop House. Do your thinking time in the pews of St James church. A position in the City, in a company of rising stock, just three streets away from us, with a desk of your own.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Pitt observed. But he hadn’t seen this coming.

“It’s utterly scandalous, that’s what it is. We’re not going to stand for it any longer,” he hissed.

Clive was amazed. Yet the details accorded well with what he might have done. He’d been continuing his investigations into the deal.

“The bizarre point is that I lost track of everything.”

“Your plea is not acceptable,” Sir Septimus replied. “You are a traitor.”

“I’m not joking. I must have even left my jacket behind. My possessions are stored somewhere. Those would include my briefcase... all my devices. Most importantly there is the evidence. I was thinking about where the heck I might have put those memory files.”

“You chanced across poor Pixie in the street,” Sep insisted. “You couldn’t resist her and this drew you back to the firm, didn’t it?”

“That’s complete rubbish. Why would I do that?” he spluttered.

“From that moment we were able to track you.”

“Are you telling me Pixie informed on me?”

“Certainly she didn’t expect to see you... outside our building,” the financier explained.

“Then she betrayed me, even if she didn’t intend to,” Pitt concluded.

“Scum like you cannot be betrayed,” Sep rebuked. He took a grip on the bedstead with his oversize hands and gave it an alarming shake. “But for the record... not to say anything unkind about the girl... she didn’t betray you. We really shouldn’t say anything unkind about Pixie now. Later she was willing to defend you. She was ready to repeat all your excuses. She claimed that you were the victim of a plot, orchestrated by Viktor.”

“Then you think she’s a liar too,” Clive insisted.

“You’d won her over. Soon after that you were back together. The girl betrayed herself, as soon as she opened her mouth. Why should she want to sell me junk like you?” he snarled.

“I just hope she’s all right,” Clive considered.

“A charming, well brought up girl like her... connected to a Norwegian shipping magnate...a girl who was skiing down Swiss mountains in her romper suit... mixed up with a plebby northern climber like you... the narrow minded son of an out-at-the-elbow building society manager, invited down to London and selected by this firm, offered a generous position, constantly with his foot in his mouth. Of course you manipulated her,” Septimus argued.

“You were jealous, you little crook. You’re still jealous. Let me tell you, she called the shots in our relationship. It’s no business of yours if she chose to go out with me,” Clive told him.

Sep’s eyes rounded in righteous indignation. Such was his loathing of Clive it was almost a pleasure to talk to him.

“Let’s go along with this, shall we? Maybe I was feeling let down by her. She never told me her new address. How did you win back her confidence? You even took her in twice. I couldn’t understand that.”

“Is she all right?” Clive asked, worried. “You haven’t killed her, have you?”

“It was a blow to understand she was helping you... feeding you information. She hacked into our hospital records. She browsed encrypted files of patients...”

“She knows how to switch it on, you know,” Pitt said.

“Many of them important patients... from clients abroad. Indeed she does. Paying a lot of money for treatment. Such a breach of trust and security. She was prepared to do this. When I had such a high opinion about her!”

“What’s happened to her?”

Sadness clouded Sep’s eyes for a moment. “Unfortunately, if you didn’t know, Pixie has met with a most unfortunate accident.”

“What are you talking about? What sort of accident?” Clive persisted.

“That’s right, in an accident. A most dreadful incident. Terrible. She stepped out into the path of a van. She didn’t look both ways, no... she didn’t look where she was going,” Sep explained, “and she went into the path of a transit van... a support workers’ van. The chap wasn’t speeding, so far as I gather...but he must have been going at a... He had no chance to stop, any more than Pixie could avoid being hit.”

“When did this happen?” Clive pressed. He struggled to find his voice again.

“Does the timing matter to you now?” Winchurch asked.

“So you’re telling me Pixie’s dead? Is that it? She’s been killed? Another terrible coincidence?” Clive accused.

“Pixie wasn’t killed. Do you think I was a witness? No, she was critically injured, but the ambulance came and took her to hospital immediately. She was badly injured, yes, rather shaken, but she’s making a recovery.”

“How exactly is she hurt?” Pitt asked.

“She was extremely lucky. Not to have been killed, I mean. However she will never be the same girl again... she suffered head injuries. The collision has rather changed her personality. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Pixie is quite another girl,” he mused. “She is so quiet, so restrained, compared to how she used to be. We might say that this awful accident has altered her character.”

“I can’t bear to listen to this,” Clive said. “Is she conscious? Does she know the people around her?”

“How could she ever forget you?” Sep remarked. “Just don’t expect her to collaborate in your fantasies any more...or to add to your conspiracy theories. I expect that her hobbies will be much gentler. Of course she’d be difficult to replace on that desk...but she wouldn’t be able to concentrate or reason properly. Sadly I couldn’t trust her judgement or her speed of reaction.”

“You arranged this, or you were involved... as with the entire affair.”

“This was just an accident Pitt. An awful, heart breaking accident,” he said, in a gravid aside. “Some brain damage, a change of personality, was part of the injuries she suffered. I’m sorry that this occurred. In some ways she’s an even nicer girl than before. At least she keeps her looks,” he added.

“I will have to speak to her. Visit her in the hospital. How can I?” Clive agonised - he was thinking out loud.

“There’s no way you’re going to visit her,” Winchurch retorted.

“Doesn’t she have a right to meet with me?”

“Shouldn’t you take some responsibility? This wouldn’t have happened without you. Or do you seriously think she was in love with you? Don’t you feel any remorse, Pitt, after all the feelings you have offended? Not to mention the lives you have destroyed?”

“I have never hurt Pixie in my life,” he replied.

“For a self-confessed amnesiac, you speak with amazing conviction!”

“Viktor pushed me into those actions.”

“You admit that you raped my daughter,” Sep challenged.

“What do you really know about me?”

“Enough. More than you do, apparently.”

“I was hard-working, dedicated, conscientious...wasn’t I? Look at my P&A year in year out.”

“You cling to a high opinion of yourself, don’t you. You can’t admit to any gaps of self-knowledge. Why are you sure about your own character? My investigators found some interesting downloads at your flat in Ladbroke Grove. Hard core pornography I believe is the popular description. At my company that means instant dismissal.”

“You think a bit of naked flesh condemns my character?” Clive replied. “Try again.”

“I wouldn’t touch you with the jaws of a sand dredger,” Winchurch argued.

The detectives’ loose grins broke out into chuckles.

“For years our minds were your fortune,” Clive argued.

“Oh, yes, really? That’s how you saw your situation?” Winchurch found a pair of soft leather gloves in his jacket pocket and peeled them back over his chubby fingers. “They also found an intriguing collection of exotic sexual instruments there in your seedy bedsit... not merely a filthy contaminated hard drive.”

“That’s impossible,” Pitt rejoined. “I deny all knowledge of these objects, which were obviously planted.”

“Clearly you don’t recognise the inside of your own mind,” Sep remarked.

“I admit to looking at pornography... from time to time. I admit that’s a bit embarrassing. But this stuff about fetishist objects is nonsense. It would be just as revealing to break into your interior mental world, Winchurch. That’s without any reference to your gangster-ism in the City.”

“What a lurid imagination you have, Pitt. Mr Muldrow and Mr Oblomov here made enquiries on a wider scale. They investigated a series of attacks on women in the west London area. Yes, I have my facts straight. They didn’t only make a record of your curious metal and rubber collection. They read through police files and went to the borough library to read back editions of local newspapers.”

The two slogs grinned at each other from either side of the bed.

“You claim there was a connection to me, do you?” Clive replied.

“True, these were not rapes. Victims were able to describe your physique and appearance... more damningly these women described objects of a type that my detectives found in your bedsit.”

“That’s impossible. This is fabricated evidence,” Clive retorted.

“You can’t deny responsibility for these crimes,” Sep argued. “They’ll lock you up for years. The felons will beat you senseless!”

“Somebody already stuck the boot into me,” Clive said.

“There was some rough justice there! No more than you deserved.”

“Don’t ask me how it was brought off. Certainly I went through some process of mind bending or washing. Anyway, some form of influence to control my thoughts and movements.”

“I fear you’ve lost your marbles,” Sep told him.

“You put me into a psychiatric ward...along with dissident intellectuals. What did they put me through?” Clive bemoaned.

“You talk about your sufferings. Of your life in ruins,” Sep retorted brokenly. “But what about the effect on my daughter? On her mother and family? And even on your former colleagues?” he barked.

“That was a strike ball for ZNT,” Clive countered.

“Stuff and nonsense was it.”

“Who gave you this raging thirst for revenge?” Clive argued.

“You really think Viktor has arranged this?” the financier considered.

“The very man,” Clive told him. “I’m his inside trade.”

“Viktor seems more interested in couture...in acquiring his prestige labels.”

“That’s all a fig leaf, I can tell you.”

“Perfumery and frocks?” Sep replied. “What can possibly be sinister about dear Viktor? You are merely envious of his drive and ambition, his genius.”

“You fixed a flotation of BIP for the fund. You set up a surprisingly low share offer. The firm was skimming off commission from fraudulent profits. You believe they saved your company, but the company’s in their pocket. ZNT are the fund and your firm is merely part of the hedge! They can destroy the firm at any time, or simply call it ZNT or even Di Visu for fun. Why not? What’s to stop them?”

“What a ridiculous allegation! No, you were master of yourself, Pitt,” Sep argued. “Now get your clothes back on. Face the consequences.”

“You have no authority. I demand to speak to the City of London police. They can put me in touch with the Serious Fraud Squad.”

“They wouldn’t give you the time of day,” the financier insisted.

The detectives pounced on him and there was a struggle. Gripping Pitt’s arms, they dragged him off the rickety bed, which clattered on its side. They managed to drag him over the floor, banging his spine, until pushing him up against a wall. As Muldrow or Oblomov put a huge mitt around his windpipe, the other one forcefully clothed him. It was like having a pair of brutal male nannies; as if Pitt could only recruit a dresser from Brixton prison.

Meanwhile Winchurch observed proceedings, until he revealed a neat little silver pistol, female in its concision. But he managed to squeeze a finger on the trigger, and he began to wave the gun about self-consciously. Toting small arms was different to handling a shotgun on a grouse shoot. He perspired, flourishing it around, like an incompetent music conductor during a difficult passage, hoping everybody would catch up with his gestures.

“How could you allow them to hurt Pixie?” Clive remonstrated. “Are you so spineless? You’re complicit. You’ll be held responsible.”

“You can say goodbye to Pixie Wright. You’ll never hear her voice again or look into her eyes... nor fall into her soft embrace. From now on you’ll be enjoying the careful attentions of my detectives. You’ll be looking into their eyes instead... feeling the caress of their hands on your body,” Sep remarked. “You’ll never experience her love again.”

Clive felt cramps and pains where Di Visu’s thugs had already worked him over. There was a burning effect in his throat and lungs, from the water.

Sir Septimus cast a satirical eye over him, before signalling for the prisoner to be dragged away.

It was a relief to escape the terrible nightmares of the past night, or week or month - whatever period of time had elapsed. He was glad to leave that ‘spare bedroom’, even under threat, slick with water and sweat. He exited with a gruesome henchman on either side; not to mention the narrow aperture of an elegant pistol at the base of his skull. Like God’s forefinger touching Adam.

Douglas Breadham was nowhere to be seen - maybe he’d left for work - as Pitt was hauled like a dead dog across the financial lawyer’s luxurious living room.