Plantation A Legal Thriller Read online



  PLANTATION

  A Legal Thriller

  J M S Macfarlane

  First published in 2016

  This publication is copyright. The moral right of John Monmouth Stuart Macfarlane to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (UK)

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The characters depicted in this book are entirely fictional and do not exist. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Six months after the Falklands War ended in the early eighties, a young Englishman, Robert Renfrew-Ashby, was working as an underwriter at the Texas Alamo Fire & Guaranty Company in Houston.

  He’d been sent there two years earlier by his father’s company, Plantation, to learn about the American market : his father was Texas Fire’s main trading partner in London.

  In deference to his father, his Texan employers had put him in the front-line, negotiating contracts for some of their quality clients – Venezuelan oil companies, shipowners in the Gulf of Mexico, Colombian coffee producers and Brazilian ranchers. He’d visited these companies in South America, just before the war in the Falklands had started.

  One afternoon, just as Ashby got back to his office from seeing some brokers, he was visited by one of the secretaries who worked two floors up. In Houston, the girls were wearing mini skirts and shorter dresses. It must have been the warmer climate.

  “This came in overnight for you, Robert – it’s marked ‘Urgent’.”

  The news in the telex was brief : his father had ‘passed away’ very suddenly ; he was needed in London the following day. The letter was signed by someone he didn’t know – George Waring from Westbridge Actuaries & Auditors. Apparently, they wanted to see him at a board meeting of his father’s company.

  Rob Ashby had no relatives in England and the only people who could tell him what had happened were at the company. As everyone in London had finished work for the day when he received the telex, he couldn’t find out anything immediately and kept ringing them but there was no answer. The news had stunned him so that he couldn’t concentrate.

  His American colleagues were understanding and it was on the PanAm flight with a long wait at La Guardia that he kept thinking about his father.

  James Ashby had achieved much in his lifetime. He’d been through the Second World War when he was young but had never talked about it. As he got older, he’d worked far too hard with no time for anything else and had pushed himself to the limit of endurance. He’d had high expectations for expanding his business ; in retrospect, it had been too ambitious.

  Around two years earlier, Jim Ashby had broadened out his business by merging with another company, Stirling Limited. He’d also had ideas for a new venture with Texas Fire in Bermuda. That was why Robert was sent to work for them and that had been the plan. Now, it was all over.

  He’d last spoken to his father a few days ago. As ever, Ashby senior had sounded tired and worn out. There were problems bedevilling him which weren’t going away. Something about claims and court cases.