Chapter 6

Although it was a perfectly good office building, full of glass and chrome, efficient in the new way of easy access for the actual residents but requiring cautious security checks of visitors, Daniel had always felt his father's office was a trap for him. In it, he could not escape the Roper legend, which seemed to demand of him adventurous financial risks, startling new roads to wealth, and the casual greed all the employees assumed was his legacy. Nearing thirty, he sensed the disappointment many felt at his more mundane, conservative management of his father's holding company.

He strolled through the right hand security lane, with a casual wave to the uniformed guard, and stepped into the open elevator waiting there for him, though it serviced several other executives in the building. As the lift rose to the top floor, he felt his anger rise again when he had demanded to see the current cost of the entire top floor of offices. He had mentioned wanting to see it several times, and it had taken a direct order to finally find out. The lease was up next year, and he cursed Sandy again for the rank waste of nearly five million pounds per year, just for a fucking office. Lord Langbourne was persona non grata in the offices now, though Daniel would usually consent to talk with him once or twice a quarter, for he still knew where some skeletons were hidden. Daniel tended to chuckle each time he used that phrase, since it was both metaphorically and, he suspected, physically true.

His mind drifted back to the interview he had had with Caroline Langbourne when he turned eighteen. At the time, she was still living with her parents, after divorcing Sandy five years before, and he found her already drunk, or nearly so, at five in the afternoon. He told no one, least of all Sandy, who as the executor of the will had great sway over his life until he attained majority. Daniel could not help comparing the rather stocky, florid woman whose hand he shook as she sat on a pink divan with the rather nice looking person he had spent several of his young summers with.

But she talked freely, all he had to do was ask, and she spun out the story for him. "Well darling, you know Jeb was just the tiniest bit naive about your father, I really think she didn't want to know the truth. But that summer was some sort of crisis, I was never quite sure about what, you know, but anyway there was Thomas, our hero because he had saved you, and so bloody good at absolutely everything. I mean, a cook to die for, surely you remember his carrot cake, the best tennis player on the bloody island, and an absolutely expert sailor. And almost from the start, you know, there was something between them. He was rather brooding, when he wasn't on show, and I could always sense their eyes meeting, at funny moments. She would never admit it, of course, and he confided in no one.

It was rather a bad time for me, Sandy was being an absolute shit, and a couple of times, in my cups, you know, I told Jeb a few of the hard truths about her Roper. I mean, I know he was your father dear, and you must idealize him, but he was doing some rather nasty things. Sandy would leave papers hanging about. I remember those huge eyes, staring at me when I told her how Roper really made money. I mean, how your dad made money. You know, I'm sure, the weapons, the drugs. I mean flogging these super modern guns to Wogs, for god's sake. I was in a great snit, and just poured it all out to her, and I know she talked to Roper, your dad dear, because I thought Sandy was going to hit me when he found out. He didn't, of course, that came later.

And about then, I've never been clear about the timing, there was this change between she and Thomas. She would be just edgy and difficult until he showed up, and then suddenly gay and happy. The staff all thought she was getting it on with him, down there at the old house he lived in, but then he went away, and we never saw him again. Jeb was a total disaster for a couple of weeks, you went home about then, as I recall, then she flew away never to be seen again. And never a word, from anyone, Sandy, Corks, none of them. That usually meant it was some sort of failure, and Roper didn't want reminding.

I remember the next year, darling, you kept asking anyone you could find 'But where's Jeb, and Thomas.' Roper would look away, and you had this nanny, and she would take you to your room." Daniel could see her head nodding sleepily, through the tears he realized were clouding his vision, and asked one last question. "But Caro, surely Thomas and Jeb couldn't have murdered Dad, could they?"

"Well Daniel, it was known that Thomas had killed people before, as a soldier, and as a criminal. He never seemed the sort, but you know he could slip in and out of a role so easily, awfully like Jeb. I was pretty well gone when it happened, but I know Sandy went around in government trying to find an ear, but things were going badly for him then, and all my money was gone, and Daddy wouldn't do anything, so it was all rather sad. I gather he's squeaking by on the stipend from your father's will. I should be careful about him, dear, he has no morals at all, basically."

Daniel chuckled about her comment on Sandy's morals as he stepped out of the lift into the waiting room of "Ironbrand Trading". and headed for his office, though it would always be his dad's. The will had specified an audit of Sandy's conservatorship on Daniel's twenty first birthday, and the scene in the Managing Partner's office of Sandy's firm came back to him. "These irregularities have persuaded us to either buy out Lord Langbourne's partnership interest in this firm, or dissolve the partnership. We will, in any case, make good the amounts that seem to have been out of school."

Sandy had been sitting there, a scowl on his face, and immediately stood and spoke directly to Daniel. "Now look here old man, you know how I stood with your father, I'm sure he never intended to have me broke out this way, surely you can forgive these trifling sums, no more than your father would have gladly approved." Daniel had sat and stared at the man he had grown suspicious of long since, as he pleaded for mercy. He thought it an interesting dilemma, and pondered it even as Sandy ranted on.

Then suddenly, both men were staring at him, waiting for a decision, he supposed. One can't make decisions like this at twenty one, he thought, there's been no time, no experience. One needs training, some sort of notion of reality. "I've read letters at Oxford for nearly four years" he thought, "how can I decide this issue which has its genesis so long ago?"

Yet in the event, he spoke most positively. "Mr. Ashforth, please don't trouble yourself about Sandy's little indecencies. He is the sort of man who couldn't have resisted temptation with so large an estate. I should think you are right in choosing not to be his partner. And you Sandy, just clear out, alright? I don't want any unpleasantness, but I couldn't possibly bugger things up any further than you already have. I will send the things from your office to your home. You will receive a statement of unreported taxable income from us shortly." He was pleased to see Mr. Ashforth smile, and Sandy look crushed.

So here he was, eight years later, watching over a progressively more conservative portfolio of stocks, his only accomplishment of the last eight years being the sale of the money losing iron plant in Tabago. But in truth he was content. One of his favorite books had been "Catcher in the Rye", typical of American writing which he thought had much surpassed English efforts in the later twentieth century. He thought he was hurting no one, and was making an effort occasionally, with gifts to various charities, to catch the little girls if they fell over the edge of the meadow.

The pretty receptionist smiled brightly, still hoping to attract his attention, even though she had been there two years. "Morning, Mr. Daniel." Meg was waiting for him just inside the office door, her usual post. She liked to push out her rather large chest as he approached, showing off the effects of implants some years before. She was closing in on forty, and her face had the weathered look of a woman who had never worried much about her skin, or appearances. Her brown hair curled around her head like a windblown halo. Her skirt this morning was slit to her waist, having been unbuttoned in anticipation of his arrival. She could become very quickly a reserved and normal administrative assistant if necessary. Daniel felt his cock spasm to stiffness, just at the sight of her, remembering the feel of her body, the amazing joy of their shared climaxes, her accommodating temperament.