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He leant closer to inspect Sachs. He was a good-looking man in the Richard Gere silver fox mode. The cut of his suits said Saville Row, his tan spoke of skiing holidays and winter breaks. Even from these grainy pictures Sachs oozed the sort of self-confidence that Alex had often encountered among the top movers and shakers. If you lived such a charmed life, why wouldn’t you feel confident? The wife was also a beauty, hovering around sixty, well-preserved, elegant with a look of Catherine Zeta Jones.
The pictures began to blur before Alex’s eyes. The same slightly forced smile, the same suits and dresses, many of the same people appearing next to the Sachss. This was pointless. He didn’t know what he had expected to find; a picture of Sachs and Meyer surrounded by teenage prostitutes?
He was just about to switch off his machine when he saw it. David Becker, the investor he’d bonded with at Dom’s pitch dinner, standing shoulder to shoulder with Michael Sachs. Looking, it had to be said, like great pals.
Alex glanced at his watch, then out at the river, an idea forming. It was a thin idea, but it was better than no idea at all.
He took out his wallet and pulled out a business card he had put in there three days before.
‘David Becker. It’s about time we got reacquainted,’ he muttered. And made the call.
Alex had thought his own gym was pretty fancy, with three floors of spinning rooms, fitness studios and lavender-infused towels, but The Mayfair Racquets Club was a whole different world. Hidden away on a discreet mews near Berkeley Square, there was a doorman in tails and a bowler hat and a beautiful redhead on reception who already knew his name and immediately showed him the way to the changing rooms. It was exactly the sort of place that a high-flyer like Jonathon Meyer would be a member of, thought Alex with a slight sense of foreboding as he opened his assigned locker and found the regulation club whites crisply ironed and waiting for him.
Alex had been apprehensive about meeting David Becker here, especially as he hadn’t held any kind of racquet in close to a decade, but there hadn’t been much choice; Becker’s squash partner had dropped out that morning and David was flying out to Frankfurt later in the day. Time was money and all that. He supposed the squash court was a better setting for a private conversation than the bar and an on-court humiliation was a small price to pay if he got the information he wanted.
David was already smashing a ball against the wall when Alex arrived at Court Three.
‘Looking good, Alex,’ called Becker, as Alex opened the glass door and went inside. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got then,’ he said, not pausing for small talk.
David hit the wall, a couple of inches above the red service line. Alex retrieved the shot without too much difficulty, moving around the court with more ease than a man who sat behind a desk for fourteen hours a day deserved to.
‘Nice shot,’ said David. ‘I didn’t know you played.’
‘It’s been a while,’ he replied, concentrating as he thwacked the ball low and hard. ‘Not since school really.’
‘Harrow?’
‘The other place,’ said Alex. It was his standard response to public school old boys; he knew that to them, ‘the other place’ meant Eton or Harrow, depending on who you spoke to, but technically Kendal Grammar was another place too. He returned Becker’s serve and smiled to himself as he remembered the town’s squash club, an old warehouse just off the A6. He’d go with his mates Jacko or Gaz, messing about on the bus journey there but taking the game deadly seriously when they were on court.
/> Alex was exhausted by the time they’d finished the first game. David had beaten him, but Alex had put up a fair fight: that was all that was required. Becker wiped his face with a towel and squirted some water into his mouth from a bottle with a thick plastic straw.
‘So, have you given any thought to Dom’s offer yet?’
‘Plenty,’ said Alex honestly. ‘That’s why I wanted to talk, actually.’
‘You know everyone is really keen to get you on board. Ideas you can change, develop or even reverse, but without the right staff to do that, you’re screwed.’
‘I was just interested to know more about the financial side of things. The backing and so on.’
‘Sensible,’ said David. He outlined some figures and who they had in mind for next-stage investors.
‘We need someone with vision, but they’d also need deep pockets,’ said David. ‘The problem with too many new media ventures is not having sufficient backing to get through the first few years.’
‘You know Michael Sachs right?’
Becker gave him a sideways look.
‘A little. Why do you ask?’
Alex knew he had to play it gently. Last night when he’d seen the picture of Becker and Sachs together, he’d been convinced David would be a conduit to insider information, but in the cold light of day, it felt more tenuous. After all, Alex had met all kinds of people at parties, but he didn’t know the first thing about their financial dealings.
‘We’re running a news piece on Sachs’s ClearView development,’ said Alex casually. ‘You know the project’s very big on the arts, the creative side, so I thought he might be interested in backing a media venture. Have you tried him?’
‘Mike’s not usually interested in our sort of stuff,’ said David, looking doubtful. ‘He does use media people for corporate intelligence work but that’s about it.’
‘Corporate intelligence?’
Alex knew what it was but he wanted to keep Becker talking; not least because he needed to catch his breath before the next game.
