Almost a Crime Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2 - June 1997

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  EPILOGUE

  ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  No Angel

  Something Dangerous

  Into Temptation

  The Dilemma

  An Outrageous Affair

  Sheer Abandon

  An Absolute Scandal

  Forbidden Places

  This edition first published in the United States in 2006 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  For bulk and special sales, please contact [email protected]

  Copyright © 1999 by Penny Vincenzi

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

  system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the

  publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection

  with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  ISBN : 978-1-590-20794-9

  For my family. Almost a dynasty . . .

  With lots of love.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Almost a Crime has been even more of a learning curve than usual; even more than usual therefore, I owe a great deal to my teachers, who have been required to be even more patient and long-suffering than usual. I would like to thank the following people who gave of their time, expertise and seemingly bottomless well of knowledge: the roll call in no particular order, alphabetical or otherwise, includes Lorraine Lindsay-Gale, Frances Sparkes, Diana de Grunwald, Roger Freeman, Pete Frost, Chris Phillipsborn, Penny Rossi, Julia Kaufmann, Virginia Fisher, Martin Le Jeune, Jane Reed, Alison Clark, Fraser Kemp MP and Carol Reay. I would like to thank Nicola Foulston for allowing me such full access to Brands Hatch and its environs, and also Tim Jones of Brands Hatch for his kindness; Henry Talbot for an absolutely marvellous tour of the House of Commons; Sue Stapely (yet again) for a specially wide-ranging contribution and set of contacts, and Georgina and Christopher Bailey for their hospitality and generosity in Barbados.

  I have to thank, as always, Orion for yet more brilliant publishing, most notably Rosie de Courcy for her editing which is tactful, patient and inspired in equal and equally important measures. Other Orion luminaries include Dallas Manderson who sells the books with such determination and skill, Lucie Stericker who made Almost a Crime look beautiful, Susan Lamb for her own particular brand of clear-sighted input and Camilla Stoddart who put the nuts and bolts in place. Others who should certainly not go unthanked are Kati Nicholl who worked such a miracle in cutting out thousands of words from the book without me ever noticing it, Emma Draude from Midas PR who has seen that the entire world knows about it, and Trevor Leighton who took yet another dazzling cover photograph. And of course Desmond Elliott, my agent, who not only does all the usual agent-like things, but makes me laugh and tells me wonderful stories I can incorporate in the books. And on the home front, I’d like to thank dear Carol Osborne who so tirelessly sees that the front of the home does indeed remain orderly, makes the best puddings in the world and even walks the dogs when the deadlines don’t permit me to do it.

  A large and heartfelt thank you to my four daughters, Polly, Sophie, Emily and Claudia, so frequently, inescapably and patiently on the receiving end of my wails of panic that the book will never be finished/ get published/be read by anyone at all; and most of all and once again my husband, Paul, who continues to soothe my anguish, steady my nerves, even at three in the morning, pour me endless glasses of Chardonnay when all else fails and most importantly never proffers advice or opinion until I absolutely drag them out of him (when both are invariably of five star quality). As always, looking back, it was the best fun . . .

  CHAPTER 1

  The first time Octavia Fleming was asked if she and her husband would appear in a feature in a glossy magazine about power marriages she had laughed aloud; of course she and Tom weren’t powerful, she said, they were just two rather overworked professional people and what was a power marriage anyway? It was a marriage, the editor had said carefully, that was mutually supportive professionally as well as personally: ‘and, we feel, one of the major sociological icons of the ’nineties’. Octavia had said that neither she nor Tom had any idea they were sociologically interesting.

  ‘Well,’ the editor had said, ‘there you are, you in the charity business, your husband in public affairs; there must be so many occasions when your paths cross, when you can help one another with contacts, or by discussing things together, by being aware of the same sort of situations. One of our other interviewees,’ she finished, ‘defined it as a marriage whose sum was greater than its parts.’

  ‘You mean the opposite of divide and rule?’ said Octavia, and the editor said yes, she supposed she did and that would be a good quote too.

  Octavia had said she’d think about and discuss it with Tom; rather to her surprise he agreed, providing he could approve the text. He said his consultancy could do with the publicity; Octavia had supposed that rather proved the editor’s point.

  The article about five such marriages as theirs appeared three months later and was entitled ‘Combine and Rule’. The feature was illustrated with some rather nice photographs – Octavia with her intense dark beauty, Tom with his slightly gaunt elegance, both of them inevitably over-glamorised. That, together with what had then been a new and rather attractive concept – the power marriage – had raised their profiles considerably.

  Other articles followed: in glossy magazines or the women’s pages in national and Sunday newspapers. Tom and Octavia became used to being recognised in the sort of places where the chattering classes gathered; people would pause with their forkfuls of rocket salad raised to their lips in smart restaurants and point them out to one another, would hurry across the room at receptions to claim a greater acquaintance with them than they actually had. And they would receive invitations to parties to launch products or meet people whom they had never heard of or hardly knew, their very presence, vaguely famous, helping to lend the right connotations of gloss and glamour to a gathering.

  They didn’t mind, rather the reverse (although the quote from one ‘friend’, that she would practically pay them to have them at a dinner party, had made Octavia squirm), and there was no doubt that both their professional lives benefited.

  What it did for the marriage itself, Octavia was rather less sure . . .

  CHAPTER 2

  June 1997

  ‘Octavia, I’ve got Tom on the line. He says can you possibly fit in drinks with him this evening? Six in the American Bar at the Savoy. He says it won’t take more than an hour because then he’s got to go on to a dinner. I said I didn’t think you could, but—’

  Octavia sometimes thought that Sarah Jane Carstairs, her awesomely efficient secretary, would make a much better job of being Mrs Tom Fleming. She would never double book herself, over-extend her energies, spread herself too thin. If Sarah Jane thought she couldn’t be at the Savoy by six this evening, then she couldn’t.

  ‘I don’t think I can either. I’ve got the meeting with a possible sponsor for Cultivate coming in at four thirty, haven’t I?’

  Sarah Jane smiled at her approvingly. ‘I’ll tell him. Now you’d better start winding up for lunch, Octavia. The cab’s just phoned, be here in five minutes.’

  ‘Yes, okay. Where am I going?’

  ‘Daphne’s.’

  ‘Fine. Have you got the notes?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll just get them . . .’

  She reappeared with a thick, rather battered file. ‘Tom’s rung again. He says if he makes it six thirty could you manage it? He’d really like you there.’

  ‘Can I do that?’

  ‘I should think so. Yes. Yes, I’ll tell him. Now, I’ve put everything in here. Mrs Piper is always impressed by volume. The fact half the things in there are years old doesn’t really matter. Oh, by the way, Tom also wants to know when Gideon’s sports day is. I did tell him, but he’s obviously forgotten.’

  ‘July tenth.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll fax it, I think.’

  And that conversation, thought Octavia, really did sum up her whole life. And how absurd a life it was, where she and Tom communicated through their secretaries, tried (and failed) to make appointments with one another, struggled to find the time to have a conversation together about quite ordinary things.

  We must have a talk about the holiday, he would say, or we really should discuss Gideon’s extra coaching, she would suggest, and they would both agree that yes they should, but there would be no time that day – he with a late dinner, she with a meeting out of town involving an overnight stay – nor the next – separate drinks parties, then a dinner, much too tired after that – maybe the weekend, except they were going to the country, taking the children but not the nanny, might be a bit tricky, but Sunday morning should be all right, yes, they’d try to talk then.

  Time to spend together on their own had become a luxury, traded in for money, success. Most of the time, they had agreed, it was worth it, and even if one of them had thought it wasn’t, there had been neither the time nor the opportunity to discuss that either.

  Just the same, their marriage, in all its frantic singularity, seemed to work.

  As Octavia walked out of her office, bracing herself for what was undoubtedly going to be a difficult lunchtime meeting, a loud shout of ‘Shit!’ came from the next office.

  ‘What did you do this time?’ she said, putting her head round the door.

  ‘Wiped a whole report. Fuck, I hate these bloody things!’

  Melanie Faulks, her business partner, was technophobic, and shrieked obscenities filled the air throughout the day, as she deleted her voice mail, wiped crucial information from reports and saved things under file names which no one could ever find.

  ‘Mel, Lucy will have saved it.’

  ‘I don’t know that she has. And I need it for lunch. Oh, God—’

  ‘Who are you having lunch with?’

  ‘Some bimbo from the Express. Dear God, Lucy, where are you, please, please come and help me . . .’

  As Octavia pushed through the swing doors on to the landing, she heard Lucy, Melanie’s wonderfully serene secretary, saying, ‘Melanie, of course I’ve got it, and I’ve run it off already, here, look . . .’

  Octavia and Melanie ran a charity consultancy, Capital C, its claim being that it put client charities ‘into capital letters’ by advising on the raising of both funds and profile.

  It was not a large company – there were two partners, and a handful of executive and administrative staff – but it was one of the top ten in the country; the turnover had run at over two million for the past three years, and looked like hitting two point five before the millennium.

  Octavia had joined Capital C five years earlier. She had a degree in law, but she had disliked private practice, finding it at once tedious and stressful, and moved with relief into the corporate legal world, and thence into corporate consultancy, where one of her clients had been a large Third World charity, and another a chain of pharmacists. Five years later the pharmacy had been running at number three to Boots; Octavia’s advice, shrewd and creative, was seen as a considerable factor.

  She had met Melanie Faulks at a lunch; Melanie, then on the staff of a large charity herself, had phoned Octavia later that day; she was in the process of forming her own company and wondered if Octavia would like to discuss a possible involvement. It was love at first sight, Octavia often said, laughing; two meetings later she and Melanie were engaged, and three months after that married.

  Octavia brought to her clients a book of contacts that was breathtaking in its range, and she networked tirelessly (‘Octavia does all her best work in the ladies’,’ one of her rivals had been heard to say rather bitterly). One of the stronger arms that Capital C had developed as a result of her input was that of broker, persuading individuals and institutions to sponsor clients with considerable amounts of money.

  Octavia’s profile was high and she was smoothly skilful at her job, at handling the odd blend of cynicism and sentimentality that characterises the charity business. ‘And it is a business, however much people dislike the fact,’ she would say at every presentation, every client pitch.

  The offices were in a mansion block at the South Kensington end of the Old Brompton Road; she and Melanie had chosen them with great care. Not a shiny, modern ritzy job (bad for the image), not too expensive an area (same reason, although the consultancy could easily have sustained a higher rent), sleekly streamlined in design inside (to avoid any possible connotations of ladies working at home, playing at business). Octavia and Melanie had small self-contained offices, the rest was open plan divided by furniture, smoked-glass screens, and – the only gesture towards femininity – a great many plants and flowers. There were white roman blinds at the windows, bleached faux-parquet on the floor, and the furniture was starkly functional, in black and white.

  The charity field was tough and very competitive. Octavia, also competitive and fairly tough, loved it.

  Margaret Piper was already at the table when Octavia arrived, sipping at a glass of tomato juice and flicking through a very battered diary.

  ‘We did say one, didn’t we?’ she asked.

  ‘We did,’ said Octavia, looking at her watch, managing to smile at her. ‘So we’re both early. Which is very good, as we have so much to talk about. I’ll have a mineral water,’ she said to the wine waiter, ‘and shall we order straight away, Margaret, so we can concentrate on business after that?’

  ‘Yes, very well.’

  Octavia ordered a green salad and some steamed sole for herself, listened enviously as Margaret Piper asked for deep-fried mozzarella and rack of lamb, and pulled out some papers.

  ‘Now then. I’ve prepared a report on progress so far this year—’

  ‘But there hasn’t been very much, has there, Mrs Fleming?’ said Margaret Piper. ‘Our profile has hardly been raised at all, and we are very disappointed in your failure to find us a sponsor.’

  ‘Well, I can understand that,’ said Octavia, ‘but these things do take time. You’re competing for a share in a very overcrowded market.’

  ‘Overcrowded perhaps, but certain charities continue to get a great deal of publicity. Every time I pick up the paper I seem to read about the Macmillan nurses. And Dr Barnardo’s. And Action Aid—’

  ‘Yes, of course you do, Mrs Piper, but you have picked three charities out of the really big league. All those have incomes of over twenty-five million pounds. They’re extremely well established, terribly popular, household words.’

  ‘All the more reason, surely, for getting some publicity for Cultivate,’ said Margaret Piper.

  ‘It isn’t quite that straightforward . . .’

  ‘Obviously not. That is why we came to you. Now there’s some other new charity, what is it called, oh yes, Network, which is getting a great deal of publicity. How do you explain that?’

  ‘Oh, well now—’ Careful, Octavia, not to start justifying yourself, it won’t help, especially as Network was also one of Capital C’s charities. ‘Network is in exactly the field I told you about at the very beginning, that gains high visibility very quickly. It’s a support organisation for bereaved parents and therefore attracts great sympathy. Everyone can imagine themselves in that situation, most people know someone in it. Cultivate is outside most people’s immediate realm of experience. And there are so many big charities in its field, like Oxfam, Action Aid . . . you really are facing some very stiff competition. And you may remember I said, at our first meeting, public sympathy, and therefore interest, does go primarily to children, anything to do with children, particularly sick children and little children. Now Cultivate is a marvellous charity, encouraging communities in the Third World to help themselves, but it isn’t something that gains instant memorability or appeal. It’s a slow process, do believe me. But we will get there.’