Bent Triangle

By Roger Croft

Frances Innes and her brother Jason inherit $50 million after their parents die in a plane crash. Both are ingenues when it comes to money and investments, so they leave the family fortune in the capable hands of an old stockbroker friend of their fathers. They decide to travel. In London, they meet up with Enrico a friendly and attractive man who claims to be the financial advisor of sheiks, third world dictators, and pop stars. Dazzled by his worldly charm and impressed by his financial expertise, they agree to join him on a leisurely trip to Tangier. There, a fateful triangle of love, jealousy, and greed is forged. Distracted by the exotic backdrops of Morocco and the seductive glamour of the Cote dAzur, Frances and Jason become the unwitting targets of a sinister conspiracy to rob them of their inheritance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781475938449

Roger Croft

ROGER CROFT is a former journalist whose reports and feature articles have appeared in numerous publications including The Economist, Sunday Telegraph and Toronto Star. In Cairo, Egypt, he freelanced as a foreign correspondent and wrote editorials for The Egyptian Gazette.

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Copyright © 2001 by Roger Croft

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ISBN: 978-0-595-17703-5

ISBN: 978-1-475-93844-9 (ebook)

iUniverse rev. date: 03/19/2012

Contents

Acknowledgements

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Epilogue

About the Author

For Tyrone Shea: 1958-1990

Acknowledgements

‘Physical Attraction’ by Reggie Lucas, copyright 1983, reprinted by permission of Likasa Music BMI.

1

Just as most people then living remembered where they were when they learned that President Kennedy had been shot, so Jason Innes would always recall where he was and what he was doing when Frances called to tell him that their father and mother had been killed in the air crash: he was in a king-sized bed with a man twice his age at the chic Pierre Hotel in Manhattan. It was to have been a week-end tryst—away from office and colleagues. But the short, desperate phone call from his sister, the only creature in the world who knew where to find him, abruptly shattered the wild and carefree trip that Jason had hastily proposed Friday lunch time.

Six months later, Jason is sitting at a bar in Tangier. It is the bar of the hotel where he is staying with Frances. He is there of necessity. Only those hotels that catered for tourists and European expatriates were permitted to offer such exotica as cocktails and hard liquor. Ever since, that is, the good King Hassan had thrown a sop to the fundamentalists, by banning the sale of alcohol in the port city’s numerous sidewalk cafes and tea rooms. Coca Cola and Fanta, however, were available in abundance to a populace which, despite a colorful cosmopolitan history, had apparently lost all taste for the more seductive products of western culture.

Jason contemplated the luckless Arabs. They were a handsome lot, well nourished but poorly clothed. The men and boys were warm and sensual, the women shy and retiring. Enrico had promised a brothel tour. They had pledged to each other that they would just go and look—no contact, no involvement no matter how tempting. But he was too contented with Enrico to be tempted, anyway. He figured the contentment was reciprocal. He sipped the gin and vermouth that passed for a dry martini. He scanned the two day-old Herald Tribune but found it difficult to concentrate on global goings-on. He glanced at his watch. Through the big open french windows he could see the white-coated waiters bustling about the flagged terrace, laying tables, rearranging glasses, folding napkins. Soon the three of them would sit down and he would listen dutifully to Frances’ commentary on the morning’s jaunt with Enrico. These increasingly regular excursions were making him jealous. But the acute pain was easily assuaged by the knowledge that, come siesta time, Enrico would head for his room, not hers. Besides, he loved his sister and he knew he shouldn’t begrudge her any momentary pleasures she garnered from Enrico’s companionship. His love for her was grounded in their common upbringing. The trauma of their parents’ sudden death had seemed to intensify their feelings for each other.

Frances was born two years before Jason came into the world. They had grown up together. They even looked alike: dark blonde hair, blue eyes (from Father), high cheekbones, full lips and dazzlingly white teeth (from Mother). They were both tall, leggy and lean—even slightly underweight for their ages.

Their father’s twin-engined 340/A Cessna crashed into the chilly waters of Lake Ontario three minutes after take-off. Nigel Innes had planned to take his wife, June, to the Bahamas for a week mainly to win her approval of a new waterfront condominium he planned to buy. It was their first get-away together in thirteen years and Jason had hoped against hope that his father had finally decided that his devoted wife deserved her fair share of attention. Jason dearly loved his mother and had often observed his father’s coolness towards her, his apparent indifference to any of her needs save those that were purely material (he had always been a ‘good provider’) and the upshot was Jason’s own lukewarm affection for his father. Jason had been devastated by the thought that he would never see his mother again, that she had been extinguished in such a brutal suddenness and possibly by the carelessness of his father.

His grief for his father had been short-lived even though he came to accept the fact that he had always had a grudging respect for him. It was after all his old man who had pushed him through school, had brought unrelenting pressure to bear when Jason, hungry for worldly experience and adult pleasures, had been on the brink of quitting college.

He recalled the nightly lectures, the marathon father-son colloquies, the grave warnings about the dire lifelong consequences of dropping the ball now—all had finally persuaded him to persevere and go on. Finally, his father’s critical help in finding his first newspaper job. He knew his father’s cronies had in some way paid back their various debts to him when a reluctant publisher offered him a job.

But Nigel Innes had never hugged his son, or even kissed his brow. He had always been distant and cool. And Jason had little respect for the business which had built the family fortune. As a child, he had too often overheard the chortling and belly laughs at the public’s unending financial naivety and incompetence, not to figure his father’s business was built largely on greed and chicanery. Now he couldn’t indulge the luxury of distancing himself from the old man and his wily trade. For it was his father’s undying devotion to Mammon that had produced the Rosedale mansion, the luxury downtown condo, the ‘cottage’ up north on Lake Simcoe. He and Frances had inherited $50 million in cash, stocks and real estate.

His father’s will had left everything to his wife (this had surprised Jason who had always suspected a mysterious mistress lurking in some secure hideaway). But his wife had died with him. Nigel Innes had been 51, his wife had celebrated her 49th birthday on the eve of their fateful trip. He had always assured her that he was supremely competent and that she was as safe with him at the controls of the Cessna as she would be in a Boeing 737. But something had surely gone wrong on that bright, early-January morning.

There had, of course, been an official inquiry into the fatal accident. The findings were largely technical. A fuel pipe had burst (the component in question was a replacement part fixed just days before the crash), a small explosion ensued and a pall of dense, acrid smoke had filled the cabin. Innes lost control and the plane nosedived into the shallow waters of the harbor. Then Jason remembers the silence: the silent resurrection of the doomed Cessna, the deathly silence that seemed to envelop the aircraft as its hulk stood for weeks like a beached, broken-winged bird on the tarmac of the lakeside airport. Finally, the silence of the grave. They were buried together, closer in eternity, thought Jason, than they ever were in life.

Jason pictured his father’s face: broad, jowly, his cheeks splattered with roseate blemishes, his thinning brown-gray hair disheveled from a heavy drinking bout. He surely would not approve his quitting the newspaper job—so hardly won by his father’s undertakings and promises to enlarge the publisher’s private fortune by allotting him big chunks of new share issues underwritten by his brokerage firm.

He had made some effort to hold on to the job. Frances had urged him to ask for a sabbatical. But the managing editor had refused. And the publisher, already rich in his own right, figured Nigel Innes’ promises and undertakings died along with the man himself. He didn’t want to know about sabbaticals, either.

Frances believed Jason could get a newspaper job anywhere, any time. So she suggested they take a ‘sort of’ world tour. New faces, new scenes, different climates would help them deal with what had happened. With Jason’s complete approval, she took over business matters.

For starters, they placed their joint fortune, or the bulk of it, with one of Dad’s colleagues, a money manager who promptly invested the funds in blue-chip stocks and government bonds. Dividends and interest from the portfolio should come to about $2.5 million a year, or $104,000 a month for each of them. That was too much. Scale our income back to $40,000 a month and reinvest the rest, she had said. Jason, aware of his vulnerability to hard luck stories from handsome would-be partners, agreed.

Jason looked out again through the french windows to the sundrenched terrace. The white linen table cloths and the sparkling silverware intensified the glare that diffused the dark, cavernous lounge. He was alone, except for the barman who wore a red fez and sat discreetly on a low stool at the other end of the bar. He would look up occasionally to check if Jason wanted another drink or to see if the side plates of green olives and potato chips needed a refill. Usually when he did so their eyes met, for Jason found Ahmed attractive. He was handsome, sultry with a dark olive skin and well developed body under his floppy shirt and baggy pantaloons. About 30, Jason guessed. Jason would give a wide smile and sometimes, inadvertently, a wink. Ahmed smiled back and Jason convinced himself, as he often did in such circumstances, that Ahmed was available for the asking.

Ahmed was now fussing around the bar, wiping the zinc surface with a damp cloth, emptying ashtrays, filling some side plates with cashews and almonds.

‘Another one, please Ahmed. Not so much vermouth this time.’

‘You want I put a double shot of gin this time, sir?’ Ahmed’s dark brown eyes widened and his perfect, white teeth shone through a broad smile.

‘Maybe that’s the answer. Just go easy on the vermouth.’

Ahmed produced a half-decent dry martini. He stood before Jason awaiting his verdict.

‘Yes. That’s a lot better. Thanks Ahmed.’

‘More olives? Some nuts?’

‘No thanks. I’m eating soon. As soon as my wandering sister and my friend arrive.’

‘They go to the casbah today, Mr. Jasons?’

‘Don’t call me Mr. Jasons, Ahmed. Just Jason, no s. And it’s my first name.’

‘Oh sorry, sorry. I try and remember.’

‘Your English is pretty good, Ahmed. Did you learn at school?’

Ahmed laughed. ‘No, no. Very little at school. Mainly with tourists. You know—lovely girls from London. And some Americans, of course. When I was young.’

‘Young! You’re still young.’

‘I’m thirty-one,’ said Ahmed, a touch of pride in having reached that milestone. ‘I mean when I was thirteen, fourteen. Very young, you know.’

‘Only females? You only showed females around town? No men?’ asked Jason disingenuously.

‘Oh sometimes men, too,’ said Ahmed. And with a quick laugh he turned to serve a couple who had just sat at the other end of the bar.

The terrace was getting busy now. Waiters and bus boys in red fezzes and black pantaloons, hovered around the guests, taking orders and serving dishes. The maitre d’ struggled to uncork a bottle of wine. Jason turned, and as he did so he saw Enrico and Frances approaching. Frances gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek, Enrico a sturdy punch to the shoulder.

Without a word they went out to the terrace where the maitre d’ had reserved a table for them by the side of the pool. A bus boy hurriedly maneuvered a large parasol to shade the table from the blistering sun. Enrico shifted his chair so that he could sit outside the shade. He was wearing a panama, and besides, he never suffered from sunburn. Frances, wearing a blue and white striped matelot T-shirt and her favorite distressed Vanderbilt jeans, looked radiant. Jason felt that familiar frisson of pride to be seen with her when she looked particularly attractive. Was it a sort of welcome camouflage behind which he could hide his relationship with Enrico? He wasn’t sure.

The waiter had asked him to order.

‘What are you guys having?’

‘Plat du jour’ said Frances. ‘Which is pan-fried red mullet and a mixed salad to start. Sounds good.’

‘I’ll have the same.’

Enrico was looking at him, a slight smile curling his thin lips. He asked Jason what he had been up to since breakfast.

‘Not a hell of a lot, really. I didn’t have breakfast. You guys left without waking me. I overslept for some reason.’ He gave Enrico an accusing look, then glanced at Frances to see if she had detected his sarcasm. If she had, it didn’t show. She was looking out beyond the blue-tiled swimming pool to the hotel’s lush gardens, a riot of purple bougainvillea, white jasmine and mimosa shrubs shaded by tall umbrella pines and eucalyptus. The hotel cat, a scrawny black and white predator, was stalking a small yellow-tailed bird that had perched on a boulder in the rock garden.

After showing Jason their morning purchases—two small brass trays and an Arabesque sandalwood cigarette box inlaid with mother-of-pearl—Frances closed her door and left Enrico and Jason to go to their separate rooms. It was siesta time. Jason’s third-floor room overlooked the pool and the gardens and was directly opposite Frances’ room. Hers overlooked a narrow lane that accessed the hotel’s kitchen and garage where three ancient Mercedes—used mainly to ferry guests to and from the airport—were parked. At night, Frances could hear cat fights and youths shouting and often banging dustbin lids in some mysterious nocturnal ritual. In the early morning, she was often woken by the wailing calls to public prayer from the mosques scattered around the city.

But she refused to change the room once she had moved in and unpacked her things. Enrico had decided to stay on the second floor where he could view the Mediterranean from a small balcony. On a clear day he could see the shimmering coastline of southern Spain.

Jason stripped off his white cotton pants and blue polo shirt and threw himself on the bed. He had removed the dingy brown coverlet and lay on crisp white sheets. Through the open window he could hear the tinkling of china and cutlery from the terrace and the lowered voices of the staff as they set the tables for dinner. He heard a gentle tap on the door and jumped up to let Enrico in. Then he plunged back on the bed, threw his briefs to the floor and spread his long, tanned legs. A look of feigned fear played around his mouth and eyes.

‘Anything up?’ asked Enrico with a smile.

‘What do you want?’ He rolled over on his side to face the window. He felt a zephyr of warm air caress his body, still burning from yesterday’s sunbathing.

Enrico knew the mood. He took off his clothes slowly, folding his pants meticulously before placing them over a high-backed chair. He hung his shirt on a hanger