The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers by Paul Torday

Author:Paul Torday [Torday, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘It’s well paid,’ I said. ‘I’m lucky to have a job at all.’

Aseeb’s saturnine face creased in the briefest of smiles.

Then I asked, ‘And what do you do, exactly, Mr Aseeb?’

The smile vanished.

‘I represent various families and business interests in the Middle East. I myself am a trader, and a banker.’ He made a pushing-away gesture with his hands, to indicate the subject was closed.

‘I wish to give you something for Mr Bilbo. Only he has the password to open it. Please take care of it. No doubt we will meet again.’

Aseeb made it clear by his attitude that the flow of information would be strictly one way. I was there to answer his questions; he was not there to answer mine. He reached into a pocket and then pushed a small silver memory stick across the table towards me. It might have been the same one I had given him a few weeks ago. They all looked the same.

Little more was said: Aseeb relapsed into his watchful silence, and made no objection when I offered to escort him back to the Berkeley. He didn’t suggest that any further entertainment would be required: no nightclubs, no last glass of whisky, no dancing girls. Aseeb was strictly business.

After dropping him off at his hotel, I drove back slowly to my flat in West Hampstead. It was late, and I was tired out by the day’s events. Images of Harriet kept flashing into my brain, like fireworks that were too bright and too noisy. Yet I wanted to concentrate on something that had been worrying me for a while. Two principals in a deal who never seemed to meet; documents too sensitive to be sent by email; a ‘trader and a banker’ from the Middle East doing a deal with Bilbo, who was burning through unimaginable quantities of cash.

When I got to the flat and let myself in to the gloomy hallway, these random incongruences had begun to knit themselves together into a longer thread. I went into the sitting room and poured myself a whisky, only my second drink of the evening, and thought for a while longer. More questions were beginning to form in my mind. Why did Bilbo never have time to meet Aseeb, if the deal they were discussing was so important? What was the problem with using emails and telephone calls, or even dropping a letter in the post? Which particular eavesdroppers were Bilbo and Aseeb so concerned about? And why did they use me as an errand boy - because that was what I was? All the questions about Mountwilliam Partners that Aseeb had asked me had been a waste of his time, and mine too. Everything I could tell him he could have learned by taking the Financial Times for a week. Our conversations on both evenings had been stilted and unreal. With hindsight I now realised Aseeb had not been the least bit interested in what I had to say.

He already knew it all.

I sighed, and tried to push the subject from my mind.

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