Power Play

Philip Simms greeted Pepper with his usual absent-minded bonhomie. Philip was a born teacher; he had the gift of communicating to his pupils the desire for knowledge. He had taught her so much…given her so much. Here in this shabby house she had….

“Did you see Oliver?” Mary’s voice cut through her thoughts.

Pepper smiled at her.

“Yes. He was just leaving. He said something about cricket practice.”

“Yes, he’s hoping to be chosen for the school’s junior team.” Love for her son and pride for his achievements shone out of her eyes as Mary talked.

Philip was carefully transplanting some young plants, and Pepper watched him. He was always so gentle and careful about everything he did, so endlessly patient and understanding.

“Come on inside, I’ll make us all a cup of coffee.”

The kitchen had changed very little since the first time Pepper had seen it; true, there was a new washing machine and fridge freezer and a new cooker, but the large cupboards on either side of the fireplace and the heavy pine dresser were just as Pepper remembered them from long ago. The china on the dresser had belonged to one of Mary’s aunts, as had much of their furniture. Money had never been of prime importance in the Simms’ lives, and for Pepper coming back was like crawling back into the security of the womb.

As Mary made the coffee they talked. Neither of them ever ceased to marvel at Pepper’s success; they were as proud of her as they were of Oliver, in some ways perhaps more so, but they didn’t totally understand her—how could they?

As she sat on one of the battered formica-covered stools Pepper wondered what Mary would say if she knew what she had done. For a moment her eyes clouded, but it was pointless trying to apply Mary’s code of ethics to her own actions. Her life, her emotions and reactions were so complex that neither Mary nor Philip could ever really understand what drove her.

They had been so upset when she first decided to leave Oxford, but neither of them had ever tried to dissuade her. She had spent nearly a year living in this house, cared for, cosseted and protected by its owners. They had sheltered her and given her something that she had never experienced before in her entire life. They were the only true good and Christian people that Pepper knew; and yet she knew many who would disparage and deride them for their simple lives and their lack of interest in wealth and success.

Coming here was something she needed almost as much as she needed revenge. She had to force herself to limit her visits. Once a month, Christmas, and birthdays…

She and Mary drank their coffee in the sort of silence that only exists between people who know one another well and are completely at ease with themselves and each other. Afterwards Pepper helped Mary to wash up and then prepare the lunch, simple domestic tasks that none of her executives or her staff would ever have imagined her doing, but no one else was ever allowed to see her like this, vulnerable and dependent.

After lunch they all went out into the garden, not to sit down and drowse in the early afternoon sun, but to attack the weeds that relentlessly threatened Philip’s flower beds. As they worked, he talked. He was concerned about one of his pupils. Listening to him, Pepper was flooded with love and humility. But for this man she would still be exactly what she had been at sixteen, an uncivilised, uneducated, little savage, who knew only the laws of her gypsy tribe, governed by emotion rather than logic.

She left shortly after five o’clock on Sunday, after afternoon tea on the lawn, eating Mary’s homemade scones and some of the jam she had made the previous summer. Oliver was there with a couple of friends, who studied her car with amused nonchalance. While she watched them Oliver had grinned at her, a conspiratorial, engaging grin that showed quite plainly the man he was going to be. Already in Oliver Pepper could see seeds of great personal charm; of intelligence and drive, and more.

All his life, wherever he went, whatever happened to him, he would have these years to look back on; the love of his parents, the security they had given him, and all his life he would benefit from those gifts, just as a seedling plant growing in good, enriched earth would grow stronger and hardier than one that had to struggle in poor soil.

Handicaps of any kind could be overcome, but they left scars like any other injury. Oliver would grow into adulthood without those scars.

Pepper got up and bent to hug and kiss Mary and then Philip. All of them walked over to her car.

“It’s Oliver’s school’s Open Day in three weeks’ time,” Philip told her. “Will you be able to come down for it?”

Pepper looked at Oliver who grinned bashfully at her.

“Well, since he’s my godson, I suppose I shall have to make the effort.”

She and Oliver exchanged smiles. She knew that she had struck exactly the right sort of note in front of his friends. They had all reached the stage where any display of adult emotion was deeply frowned upon.

She got into the car and turned the key in the ignition. Ahead lay London, and Monday morning.

Would they respond to her letters? Somehow she felt they would. She had dangled a bait none of them would be able to refuse. All of them, for their varying reasons, would expect to benefit from a connection with Minesse Management. Pepper smiled grimly to herself as she headed for the motorway—a brief twist of her lips that held more bitterness than amusement.

3

On Monday morning Pepper overslept and was late. She could feel the tension building inside her as a traffic jam in Knightsbridge delayed her still further.

Up ahead of her she could see people milling in and out of Harrods, Knightsbridge, the Brompton Road, Sloane Square; all of them had become a shopping paradise for those with money to spend.

Elegant women in Sloaneish Caroline Charles outfits, wearing Jourdan shoes, paused outside shop windows. It was here in Harvey Nichols that the Princess of Wales had shopped prior to her marriage to the heir to the throne, and in nearly every department in the exclusive store were girls whose sharply cut British upper-class accents mirrored hers. American and Japanese tourists gathered outside Harrods’ main entrance. Pepper noticed absently that Arab women were much less in evidence now than they once had been.

She glanced impatiently at the clock on the car’s dashboard. She had no morning appointments, but she hated being late for anything because it implied that she was not in full control of her life. Even so, she fought down her impatience; impatience made people careless and led to mistakes. Mistakes—unless they were other people’s—had no place in her life.

It was so unusual for her to be late that the receptionist had already commented on it when Miranda went down to collect the post.

“Perhaps she’s had a heavy weekend?” Helena murmured suggestively as she handed over the envelopes.

Miranda was as curious as the other girl about Pepper’s sex life, but she was too well trained to show it. Gossiping about one’s boss had been the downfall of many a good personal secretary, and there wasn’t much that slipped Pepper’s attention.

“I wonder if she’ll ever marry?” Helena mused, obviously reluctant to let the subject go.

“A lot of successful business women do combine careers and marriage,” Miranda pointed out.

“Um…I saw a photograph of her in one of the papers with Carl Viner. He’s terrifically sexy, isn’t he?”

Miranda raised her eyebrows and said drily, “So’s she.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pepper come into the building. There was no mistaking that distinctive, deceptively languid walk, a lazy flowing movement of hips and legs.

“Morning, Miranda—Helena.”

Pepper acknowledged both young women and walked past them towards her office, leaving her secretary to follow her.

“Miranda, I’m expecting four gentlemen at three o’clock this afternoon. I’ll see all of them together. Here are their names.” She passed a piece of typed paper to her secretary.

“Right…would you like coffee now?”

“Yes, please. Oh, and Miranda, you might alert the security guard to make sure he’s on the premises while they’re here, please.”

Although she was far too well trained to betray any surprise, Miranda tried and failed to remember a single other occasion when Pepper had made such a request. Curiously she glanced at the names, recognising only two of them. An MP and an entrepreneur. Mmm. She shrugged her curiosity aside, knowing it would be satisfied when Pepper dictated to her her notes from the meeting. Pepper was meticulous about keeping records of all her conversations, both with her clients and with potential sponsors.

Putting the piece of paper down on her desk, Miranda walked into the small kitchen hidden away behind her office. A staff room opened off it—an airy, attractively decorated room with bookshelves and comfortable seating. Minesse Management did not provide their staff with canteen facilities; the small number of employees did not merit it, although there was a formal dining room adjacent to Pepper’s office, where she sometimes lunched clients and sponsors. The food for these lunches was provided by a small firm that specialised in doing lunches and dinners for executive functions. It was often Miranda’s task on these occasions to check out their guests’ religions and preferences, and once Pepper had these facts to hand she would call in the caterers to discuss with them the type of meal she wanted them to serve.

In this as in everything else Pepper always displayed an insight and authority that was almost intuitive. If Miranda had ever expressed this view to Pepper, Pepper would have told her that she had long ago learned that attention to even the smallest detail was important when you were gambling for high stakes.

In the small kitchen Miranda made fresh coffee and poured it into a coffee pot. She set an elegant silver tray with the pot, a matching cup and saucer, and a tiny jug of cream. The china was part of the dinner service used in the clients’ dining room, white with a dense blue band and edged in gold. It was both very rich and severely restrained—rather like Pepper herself in many ways.

When Miranda took in the coffee Pepper put down the papers she was working on to say,

“If any of the men on that list telephone, Miranda, I don’t want to speak to them. If any of them cancel their appointments please let me know.”

She didn’t say anything more and Miranda didn’t ask her any questions. Pepper didn’t delegate. The success or failure of Minesse Management lay in her hands and hers alone.

She drank her coffee while she studied the newspaper clippings from the weekend’s newspapers. It was part of Miranda’s job to go through the papers and clip out any mention of their clients or sponsors.

At quarter to twelve she cleared her desk and rang through to her secretary.

“I have an appointment with John Fletcher at twelve, Miranda. I should be back around two, if anyone wants me.”

John Fletcher was an up-and-coming designer. Pepper had seen some of his clothes in a Vogue feature on new designers, and she had commissioned him to make two outfits for her. As yet he was not very well known, but Pepper planned to change all that. She had on her books a young model who was being tipped to go far, and it was in her mind to link model and designer in a way that could promote and draw attention to them both.

Louise Faber had introduced herself to Pepper at a cocktail party. She was eighteen years old, and knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. Her mother had been a model, and so through her Louise already had the looks and the contacts to get into the business. Several of her mother’s contemporaries had grown from modelling into other more powerful areas of fashion, and Rena Faber had been able to call on old loyalties to give her daughter a good start. But Louise was no ordinary dewy-eyed eighteen-year-old whose ambition was to get her face on the front cover of American Vogue.

Louise had her own ambitions. She wanted to own and run a Michelin-star restaurant, but for that she needed money, and training. Without money and influence she would have very little chance of being taken on at the kind of restaurant where she could get the training to fulfil her ambitions. Women were not chefs, they were cooks, but Louise aimed to prove that that was wrong.

Her parents had divorced while she was quite young, and from what she had told Pepper there was not enough money in the family anyway to finance either the training or the sort of restaurant she would eventually want to own. A chance remark by one of her mother’s friends, that she would make a good model, had led to her deciding that modelling would be an excellent way of earning the money she needed. Once having made that decision she was determined that if she was to model, then she wanted to be the best.

She needed an image, she had confided to Pepper, something that made her stand out from the other pretty, ambitious girls, and remembering John Fletcher, it had occurred to Pepper that designer and model could well have something to offer one another. If in her off-duty hours Louise wore only John Fletcher models, both of them would benefit from the publicity. Pepper had the contacts to make sure the press picked up on the story. She had already discussed it with John, and today he was going to give her his decision.

Initially she would make very little from the deal; but this was her forte, to spot original and new talent, whether in sport or any other field, and to nurture it towards success, and then to reap financial benefit.

No sponsor would ever risk his money on an un-proven outsider, but only let one of her outsiders start winning and Pepper was then in a position to make her own terms. That was how she had started off—spotting a potential winner before anyone else.

John Fletcher had premises just off Beauchamp Place, an enclave of designer and upmarket shops off the Brompton Road. Because of the lunch-time traffic, Pepper hadn’t used the Aston Martin, and her taxi dropped her off several doors away from her destination. Two model-thin girls emerging from Bruce Old-field’s premises turned to look at her. Neither of them was a day over nineteen.

“Wow!” one exclaimed to the other. “Now that was real class!”

There was no one in the foyer as Pepper walked up the stairs to John Fletcher’s showrooms. She knocked briefly before walking in.

Two men were standing by the window, studying a bolt of scarlet fabric.

“Pepper!” John Fletcher handed the silk to his assistant and came to greet her. “I see you’re wearing the black.”

Pepper smiled at him. She had chosen to wear the black suit he had designed for her quite deliberately. Wasn’t it a black skull cap that judges used to wear when pronouncing the death sentence? Miles French should appreciate the finesse of her gesture, even if the others didn’t, but somehow she was sure that they would.

The skirt of her suit had been cut in the new short, curvy shape that clung to her hips and waist. She allowed John’s assistant to help her off with the jacket. He was one of the most beautiful young men she had ever seen, sleekly-muscled, golden-skinned and golden-haired. A covert look passed between the boy and John which the latter acknowledged with a brief shake of his head.

Pepper intercepted it, but waited until she and the designer were alone before saying lightly,

“Very wise, John. I’d be extremely mortified if you were to offer me the services of your tame stud.”

“He hasn’t been with me very long, and I’m afraid he’s still a bit gauche,” John apologised.

“Do you get many clients asking for that sort of service?” Her voice was slightly muffled as she stepped into a cubicle and stripped down to her underwear.

“Enough. But how did you know? Most people walking in here take one look at him and assume…”

“That you’re gay?” Pepper stepped out of the cubicle and flashed him a mocking smile. “I know when a man likes women and when he doesn’t, John, but I should have thought you were making enough profit from your clients without that sort of sideline.”

“Oh, I don’t provide it. Any arrangement my clients come to with Lloyd is their affair entirely.”

Pepper’s mouth twitched. “But word gets round, doesn’t it, and there are plenty of bored rich women who’ll patronise a designer who can do more for their bodies than simply clothe them.”

John shrugged. “I have to make a living.”

“Mmm. Speaking of which…”

As he worked, Pepper discussed with him her plans that Louise Faber should exclusively model his clothes.

“I like it.” He stood up and studied the dress he was pinning on her.

“Do you think you’ll be able to get the tie-in with Vogue?” she asked.

“I should think so. I’ve got several contacts there. There should be a number of their fashion editors at the charity do you and I are going to tonight. We could talk with them and if it looks good, then Louise and I can get together to thrash out the details.”

Pepper left half an hour afterwards, picking up a cruising taxi that deposited her outside her favourite restaurant. The head waiter recognised her instantly, and escorted her to a table that made her the focal point of all other diners.

The restaurant had originally been a decaying three-storey building in a row just off Sloane Square. Pepper had bought it when she first suspected that the rich were transferring their loyalty along with their cheque books and credit cards, from Bond Street to Knightsbridge. All three floors were let out at extremely good but not extortionate rents. She had provided the finance for the restaurant, and she had also been the one who had tipped off the chef manager that Nouvelle Cuisine was on the way out and something a little more substantial on the way in.

There wasn’t a day of the week when every table in the place wasn’t taken. A subtle PR campaign had made it the “in” place to go. Coveys of elegant well bred women sat round the tables, nibbling at food they had no intention of eating—their size ten figures were far too important. Anyway, they hadn’t come here to eat; they’d come to see and be seen.

An artist who was another of Pepper’s clients had transformed the drab interior of the building with outrageously erotic trompe l’oeil, and if one was sufficiently in the know it was possible to discern in the features of the frolicking nymphs and satyrs the facial characteristics of many prominent personalities. When a person faded from the limelight, their faces were painted out and someone else’s, someone who was new and newsworthy, painted in. It wasn’t entirely unknown for actresses and even politicians to discreetly suggest to Antoine that their faces would look good on his walls.

Pepper’s involvement in the restaurant was a well kept secret; her face did not appear on any of the gambolling nymphs, but as she followed the head waiter across the smooth dark grey carpet, every pair of eyes in the place marked her indolent walk.

She sat down and gave her order, without reference to the menu, her forehead creased in a slight frown. Most of the women lunching together were in their early twenties or late forties, young wives or bored divorcees. The other women, those with careers, those with money, spent their lunch hour dining clients or extending their range of contacts; the sort of business that their male equivalents carried out in their clubs.

Soon these women would need the cachet of the same exclusivity. As yet there were very few clubs catering for the new breed of career women; somewhere they could entertain their clients, have lunch and even stay overnight if necessary.

If Pepper’s clients had provided the bulk of her cash flow, then it was her own careful investment of those funds that had given her the very secure capital base underpinning her business. Pepper was always in the market for a good investment. She smiled to herself, her mind sliding easily into overdrive, exhilarated by the challenge of her thoughts.

Although she knew people were watching her, she ignored their covert looks, mentally weaving the threads which could form the pattern of a new business venture, at the same time thoroughly enjoying her fresh salmon and its accompanying vegetables. Pepper had gone short of food too often as a child not to appreciate it now. She was fully aware of how many of the women toying with their plates of salad were secretly gnashing their teeth over both her appetite and her apparent disregard for the effects of what she was eating on her figure.

What they didn’t know was that tonight she would eat a very meagre meal indeed, and then before she got ready to go out she would also have half an hour of tennis coaching on the indoor courts belonging to the private sports complex attached to her home. Dieting in public drew attention to a possible weakness, and Pepper had learned long ago never to let anyone see that she could be vulnerable.

She arrived back at the office at five minutes past two. Miranda followed her in to tell her that she had received phone calls from all four of the gentlemen on the list. Three of the four had asked to speak to Pepper personally, but on being told that she wasn’t available had settled for confirming their appointments.

“And the fourth?”

Miranda consulted her list.

“Miles French? Oh, he simply confirmed that he would be here.”

She thought as she left Pepper standing beside her desk that her boss was looking rather abstracted, but she knew better than to ask questions.

At two-thirty, Miranda prepared a trolley ready for the tea she would be asked to serve later in the afternoon. The fine china was Royal Doulton and like the coffee cups had been specially designed to Pepper’s specification.

All four of the men arrived within ten minutes of one another. The receptionist showed them into the waiting room, then rang through to Miranda to tell her that they had arrived. She glanced at her watch. Five to three.

Inside her office Pepper refused to give in to the temptation to glance through her files one final time. She had already checked her make-up and clothes, and she fought against a nervous impulse to check once more. At five to three her internal telephone rang, and her stomach lurched. She picked up the receiver and acknowledged Miranda’s advice that the four men had arrived.

Taking a deep breath, she said calmly, “Please show them in Miranda, then bring us some tea.”

Across the hallway in the comfortably furnished waiting room the four men waited. They had recognised one another, of course, each a little surprised to see the others, but acknowledging the acquaintanceship. Their lives touched only rarely these days. Only Miles French seemed totally relaxed. What was he doing here? Simon Herries wondered, frowning slightly as he studied him. Was he somehow connected with Minesse? Retained by them to handle their legal affairs, perhaps?

The door opened and an attractive brunette stepped inside. “Ms Minesse will see you now, if you would just come this way, please.”

When they were shown in Pepper was standing with her back to the door, pretending to study the view outside her window. She waited until Miranda had brought in the tea things and closed the door behind her before turning around.

All four men reacted to her, but she could only see recognition in the eyes of one of them.

Miles French. Pepper deliberately let her expression go blank, hiding from him her fury and loathing.

Across the desk Miles studied her with curiosity and amusement. He had recognised her face immediately, but it had taken him a few seconds to place her. He looked at his companions and realised that none of them had; his senses, honed by his legal training, picked up on her tension. She had come a long way since Oxford, a long, long way.

Simon Herries was the first to speak. Pepper let him shake her hand and give her his practised smile, a judicious blend of male appreciation, sincerity and seriousness. He had filled out since she had last seen him, and it suited him. He looked what he was—a prosperous and successful man. The others followed suit. Miles French was the only one to look directly into her eyes, trying to put her at a disadvantage, she acknowledged, her heart thumping unpleasantly fast as she met the recognition in his smile.

That was something she hadn’t anticipated. None of the others had recognised her, and that he should have done so threw her slightly off guard.

“I’m sure you’re all wondering why I asked you to come here.” Her smile was professional and tempting, promising that none of them would be disappointed in their anticipation. She had already unlocked the drawer that held their files, and now she reached down with one smooth practised movement and removed them.

“I suggest that it might facilitate things if you were all to read these.” The files held only copies, of course. Duplicates of them were safely deposited with her bank. Pepper had no intention of seeing almost ten years of work torn up in front of her eyes.

While she poured the tea she waited to see how long it took for the secure, self-satisfied smiles to disappear.

Richard Howell’s went first. She saw his eyes narrow and then leave the papers he was studying to stare at her.

“Milk, Mr Howell?” she asked him sweetly.

Each of those files held a secret that if made public could destroy their professional lives for ever. Each of them had thought that secret so deeply buried that it would never be uncovered. Each of them had been wrong!

Richard Howell was now a highly respected and respectable merchant banker; but once he had simply been a younger and much poorer relative in the banking empire run by his uncle David.

It had taken a lot of digging to discover how he had got the money that enabled him to secretly buy up enough shares to challenge and eventually overthrow his uncle’s control of the family business. It had taken Pepper months of painstaking work to discover that he had first started buying up shares while he was working in the safe deposit department of the bank.

For many people their safety deposit boxes are simply a place where they leave their valuables to prevent them from being stolen. There are, however, those who find that safety deposit boxes are excellent places to conceal funds—or other items—gained by other and often illegal means: tax evasion, fraud and sometimes outright theft.

It had been Richard Howell’s good fortune during the time he was in charge of the safe deposit department to come across a man who fell into this last category. In addition, since it was a rule of the bank that they should hold duplicate keys for their safety deposit boxes, he was able, by carefully choosing his moment, to unlock it and discover for himself exactly what was inside—but that had only come later, following the death from a heart attack of the man who called himself William Law.

“William Law” had had his heart attack in the street, half a mile away from the bank’s premises. The evening papers had carried his photograph and a small paragraph on his death, only his name hadn’t been William Law but Frank Prentiss, and he had at one time been a member of a gang who had been suspected of carrying out several wages snatches involving hundreds of thousands of pounds. The police had never been able to get enough evidence to convict Frank Prentiss and the other members of the gang, and when three months went by without either the police or the bank connecting Frank Prentiss with William Law, Richard Howell went painstakingly through the records, and then when he was sure that no one would ever know, he removed from William Law’s safety deposit box everything but a couple of hundred pounds.

He had no fears about the money being traced back to him—a man as clever as Frank Prentiss must surely have had the stolen notes laundered, and if the police did make the connection between William Law and Frank Prentiss, and find the safety deposit box, then they would just assume that Frank had spent the money.

There was now two hundred and forty-five thousand pounds in Richard Howell’s private account with Lloyds Bank, and by the time his uncle decided to query where on earth the money had come from it was already too late—Richard was the new majority shareholder of Howell’s bank, having used that original £245,000 as the basis of a fund which through clever and informed dealing on the Stock Exchange he very quickly managed to turn into a very large sum indeed.

Pepper smiled gently at him as she handed him the cup of tea. It amused and exhilarated her to see the panic in his eyes. No doubt he had thought himself safe and invincible—now he knew better.

And what of Simon Herries, the up-and-coming politician; the upholder of decency and family life; the closet homosexual who got his real sex thrills with young boys—the younger the better! When he was at Oxford he had been the ringleader of a select group, all bound to secrecy, who had dabbled in black magic among other things.

Pepper smiled dulcetly into the furious blue eyes that glittered dangerously across the width of her desk.

Alex Barnett had also been a member of that select group—if only briefly. Still, it was long enough to prevent any adoption agency from ever allowing him on their books. Pepper knew all about Julia Barnett’s desperate need to have a child, and she also knew how much Alex loved his wife.

And so, on to Miles French. He had disappointed her. It was true that he had a highly active sex life, but he was very selective when it came to choosing his partners and faithful to them while the relationship lasted. Pepper had waited a long time to get something sufficiently damning on Miles, but at last her patience had been satisfied.