Free The Money Makers by Harry Bingham

as he was to remind himself to keep guard, to step back, to break contact, two thoughts persisted.
    First, he remembered just how good their sex had been. It had puzzled both of them that their sex could be quite so good when their relationship was such a disaster. It was almost as though their bodies understood something the rest of them had yet to grasp.
    Second, it occurred to him for the first time that the future husband of Miss Sarah Havercoombe would step right into one of England’s richest families. For Miss Sarah Havercoombe, a million pounds would be small change indeed.
     
     
    2
    The sign must have been painted thirty years ago. ‘The Gissings Modern Furniture Company (Ltd)’, it boasted in giant pink lettering. ‘Our modern furniture means modern style but modest prices!’ The feeble pun was complemented by a picture of a secretary, complete with miniskirt and beehive hairdo, gesturing inanely at a suite of office furniture. No doubt it had looked cool in 1963, but in the late 1990s prices would have to be very modest indeed to tempt the average buyer.
    George slowed his Lotus and turned in between the factory gates. Beyond the factory, there were a few fields of rough grazing, then open moor. It would be a bleak place to work in winter, comfortless in summer. A couple of men dawdling across the yard glanced at the newcomer, then stared. Not many Lotuses came to The Gissings Modem Furniture Company nowadays.
    George turned the engine off and listened to its musical notes dying away. The yard which doubled as a car­ park was covered with a mixture of rainwater, gravel, wood chippings, and machine oil. George poked his beautifully shod foot out of the car and stood up care­ fully, making sure his tum-ups weren’t dirtied by con­ tact with the ground. He drew his Dior sunglasses from his jacket pocket, put them on and walked over to the door marked ‘Reception’.
    A listless woman at the reception desk put down her copy of Puzzler magazine and stared at the apparition. George stared back. ‘Tom Gissing, please.’
    The receptionist gestured towards a hideous suite of furniture in the comer of the small lobby. ‘Please sit down,’ she said. ‘I’ll let Mr Gissing know you’re here.’ George sat on one of the Gissings chairs in the comer, which wheezed and creaked as he lowered himself. Just for a moment, George wondered why he’d come.
    In time, an elderly man limped over to George.
    ‘Mr Gradley? George Gradley?’ he said shaking George’s hand. ‘I knew your father, you know, back in the sixties when he was starting up. Tried to have him join our Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club, but I fear he was a little fast for our ways. Still, he did well for himself and we’d have liked to have had him. You do look like him, you know. Everyone must tell you that. I’m very sorry, of course, to have learned of his, er, accident’ - the old man couldn’t bring himself to use the word death - ‘I always feel these things are terribly hard on the young. So much less experience of loss, you see. Nothing, really.’
    As the old man rambled on, he led George to the proudly named executive office. A secretary, only about thirty but already ageless, watched them grimly.
    ‘D’you want tea?’ she asked.
    ‘Coffee, please,’ said George.
    ‘The machine’s knackered, so you’d best have tea,’ she said and left the room. She was short and squarely built, much as George himself was, and much as Bernard Gradley had been too. The ginger hair which crowned George’s head was there on hers too, worn in a bob. Her face was a bit wonky and her chin was too broad to be quite feminine. But George’s face was crooked too and his features were hardly delicate. To a stranger, the two of them would look like brother and sister. The old man took George to a table at one end of the room and twitched at some papers which lay there.
    ‘Mr Ballard from the bank told me you would be coming. It’s a relief to see