Chapter 34
Gabriel takes back his phone and dials a number, putting it on speakerphone so I can listen.
‘Hi, Gabriel.’ Harvey’s voice sounds concerned. ‘I was about to call. Where are you?’
‘I’m just in town sorting some things out,’ Gabriel tells him coolly. ‘Tell me something, are you at the house?’
‘Yes. The piano tuner is here and I’m putting the final touches to the recording schedule for the CD we’re going to issue to promote the Japanese tour in May. You’re supposed to be here brainstorming it with me, remember?’
‘Sorry,’ Gabriel tells him curtly. ‘It slipped my mind.’
Harvey’s voice turns soothing, as if talking to an upset child.
‘Look, I wasn’t going to say anything while we were on tour, but is everything all right?
You seem to have lost your usual razor-sharp focus.
Shall I get an appointment with Mr Harrison on Harley Street?
Might be worth just getting you a health MOT. What do you say?’
‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ Gabriel replies. ‘Like I said, I’ve just got a few things I need to deal with this morning.’
‘You should have given those to me,’ Harvey interrupts, sounding a little cross now. ‘Sorting things out for you is literally my job, in case you’ve forgotten. You need to be here, focused on your work.’
‘This is something I needed to handle personally,’ Gabriel tells him. ‘Is Consuela there?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘I just wanted to catch her before she goes shopping. There are a couple of things I need.’
‘Shall I put her on?’
‘No, don’t worry. I’ll call her myself.’
‘OK. When will you be back? I really need you to look at this CD thing.’
‘Soon. Thanks, Harvey.’
‘Who is Consuela?’ I ask when Gabriel has ended the call.
‘She’s my housekeeper. Sorry about this. I’m winging it like mad at the moment. Give me a few more minutes and hopefully everything will become clear.’ He picks up his phone again and dials another number.
‘?Hola Consuela!’ he says, surprising me with his fluent-sounding Spanish. ‘Perdona que te interrumpa, pero hay algo muy importante con lo que necesito tu ayuda. ?Está bien?’
The rest of the conversation sails completely over my head, but I’m almost less surprised to discover that he evidently speaks fluent Spanish than I am by the conspiratorial tone in his voice, which isn’t what you’d expect from someone delivering a shopping list. I hope he’s not ordering more champagne and strawberries.
Whatever he says, and whatever the explanation for this whole debacle, it’s going to be a long time before I can enjoy those again.
His smile is almost beatific when the call ends.
‘Nearly there,’ he assures me, evidently completely unaware that he’s not making any sense at all.
There’s a brief silence before his phone rings. It’s obviously Consuela, as the short conversation is in Spanish again. As soon as it finishes, he launches an app and taps a few buttons.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask when he sets the phone back down. ‘And why did you never mention you speak Spanish?’
‘I speak Spanish, and you’ll see what’s going on in a minute,’ is all he says.
He doesn’t get to explain any further as the phone rings again almost immediately. He smiles and puts it on speaker once more.
‘Gabriel.’ Harvey’s voice sounds irritated. ‘Can you check the front door app please?’
‘Why?’ Gabriel says smoothly. ‘What’s up?’
‘Bloody Consuela just came into the study, yapping on about having trouble with the smart lock and saying I need to test it straight away because she wants to go shopping but there’s no way she’s going out if she can’t get back in.
I mean, what am I, a security guard now?
But you know what she’s like, all histrionic and Hispanic, so I agreed.
There’s definitely something up with it though, because it’s not letting me back in.
Every time I try it just beeps and a message appears on my phone screen saying access revoked. ’
‘Hm,’ Gabriel replies. ‘That does seem odd. Let me check for you.’ He lets a few seconds pass before speaking again. ‘No, that looks right. Your access has been revoked, so it’s doing what it should.’
‘Look.’ Harvey sounds really cross now. ‘I don’t have time for games. I’ve got a lot of work to do. Just reset it, let me in and get back here, all right?’
‘No,’ Gabriel says firmly.
‘What?’
‘I’m not letting you back in until we’ve had a little chat. Like I said, I’m in town at the moment, in a meeting. Some interesting things have come to light that I need to ask you about.’
‘For fuck’s sake.’ Harvey is almost shouting now. ‘If you want to play twenty questions, we can do that when you’ve finished whatever the bloody hell it is you’re doing in town. In the meantime—’
‘Do you remember Tori?’ Gabriel asks, cutting him off mid-flow.
‘Who?’
‘Tori, the woman who came with me to meet you at the airport in Jamaica.’
‘Vaguely. She’s the one you made all that song and dance about, isn’t she. Total waste of time that was, given that she buggered off at the first opportunity. What’s she got to do with anything?’
‘She buggered off?’ Gabriel repeats.
‘Yeah. I went to all that effort like you asked me to, and she just threw it back in your face, didn’t she. Couldn’t even be arsed to come to the after-show party and say thank you. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised. She was obviously just out for what she could get. You’re well shot of her.’
My mouth drops open in outrage, but Gabriel holds up his hand to stop me from speaking.
‘I was surprised,’ he says as if the idea had just come to him, ‘that she didn’t come to the party. You don’t think someone warned her off, did they?’
‘I have no idea,’ Harvey replies, a note of uncertainty coming into his voice for the first time. ‘My job is to manage your professional life, not worry about the motivation of some hanger-on.’
‘So you didn’t send her a letter, pretending to be me?’
‘Of course not!’ Harvey is sounding distinctly wary now.
‘Interesting,’ Gabriel replies smoothly. ‘See, I’ve learned that Tori received a letter from me, basically giving her the brush-off. Now, I know I didn’t write it, and I’m fairly certain she’s not making it up, so where on earth do you think it could have come from?’
There’s a pregnant pause.
‘When you say you’ve learned that Tori received a letter,’ Harvey begins carefully.
‘Oh, yes,’ Gabriel replies. ‘I should have mentioned that. Sorry, I forgot. Maybe I need to see Mr Harrison after all. She’s sitting with me. Say hello, Tori.’
‘Hello, Harvey,’ I say to the handset.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Harvey thunders, obviously trying to wrest back control of the narrative.
‘Is that what this is all about? Fine. Yes. I wrote the letter. I could see she was a bad influence on you, so I did what any responsible manager would do and got rid of her. I was doing you a favour. Are we done now? Can I get back to work?’
‘A bad influence?’ I interject before Gabriel can speak. ‘How on earth could you know what kind of influence I was? You barely spoke three words to me.’
‘I didn’t need to know you to see the effect you were having,’ Harvey replies, sounding more confident again. ‘You were distracting Gabriel.’
‘How?’
‘All that banging on about limos, champagne and fucking strawberries when he should have been concentrating on the rehearsals for starters,’ Harvey says furiously.
‘But the pièce de resistance, the point at which I knew absolutely that you had to be taken out of the picture, was the encore. What the hell even was that? Gabriel is a world-class pianist, but one flutter of your eyelashes and he’s playing Lady fucking Gaga?
What’s next, finishing each concert with a Beatles singalong medley?
I’m sure you’re a lovely person and everything, Torah—’
‘Tori,’ I correct him.
‘Whatever. My point is that Gabriel didn’t get to be where he was by letting himself be distracted by air-headed women, however pretty.
You’ve had your fun, and you’ll have a lovely story to tell your grandchildren one day about how you met this famous concert pianist once.
But, in order for you to have that story to tell, I need to make sure Gabriel remains a famous concert pianist, and I won’t be able to do that if he’s dumbing himself down to playing God knows what. ’
‘The reviews were ecstatic,’ Gabriel observes mildly.
‘Of course they bloody were,’ Harvey says as if explaining a simple concept to an amazingly stupid toddler.
‘You did something new. They’re bound to lap it up.
But when the dust settles, people will be asking what level of arrogance it takes for a person to imagine they can improve on one of Liszt’s masterworks.
It may all be flowers and kittens now, but they’ll turn on you soon enough.
Another fucking headache for me to manage. ’
‘Let me save you that headache,’ Gabriel says, his voice now steely.
‘Absolutely not. I don’t want you dragging yourself any further into this. You need to focus on your work. Tori has set you back enough.’
‘Harvey, shut up for a minute and listen. This is important. You’re not going to have to deal with that headache, because I’m letting you go.’
‘What? Go where?’
‘Letting you go, as in I’m firing you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Harvey says after a brief pause. ‘I’m not sure I heard that right. You can’t fire me.’
‘I think I can.’
‘Let me rephrase this,’ Harvey says menacingly. ‘You don’t want to fire me. I know where all the skeletons are buried. I will finish you.’
‘There are two ways this can play out,’ Gabriel tells him, evidently unmoved by the threat.
‘Either you go quietly, in which case I will tell people how sad I am, but you felt it was time to look for new challenges. Or you can fight it, in which case I’ll have no choice but to fire you publicly on the grounds of gross misconduct. ’
‘Gross misconduct? For what?’