Heartbreaker

Chapter One Carta I Godless Morality richard holloway I In 1990 I survived a life-crisis. In 1991 I wound up working for a good cause. But never did I foresee that in 1992 my vital companion during the next stage of my journey would be a prostitute. Let's face it, one doesn't normally connect prostitution with church fundraising. 1992 . . . It was that long-ago year when mobile phones still only operated through terrestrial links, that era of technological pre-history before the word "internet" began to ricochet in earnest around the square mile called the City which forms London's financial district. I had worked there once as a lawyer, but now I had opted for a different lifestyle. This decision, which I never regretted, led to an invitation to reorganise the business affairs of a City church called St. Benet's-by-the-Wall. The people there had supported me following the collapse of my brief marriage and the loss of my job; in fact they had supported me through a time so horrific that I still shuddered to think of it, so when I found myself in a position to repay my debt to St. Benet's I seized the opportunity with both hands. The opportunity arose when the office manager of the St. Benet's Healing Centre suddenly died and the Rector was faced with the task of finding someone with financial expertise who was prepared to work for a pittance. I volunteered to work for nothing, and during 1991 I reorganised the office. This inevitably led to a vision of the future in which expensive computers were needed, and once the subject of money arose, the idea of expansion soon surfaced. Immediately all eyes at St. Benet's swivelled to the derelict house across the road. The building, a rare City freehold zoned for residential use, was owned by the Church Commissioners, who had been hanging on to it in the forlorn hope that the property market would revive. At that point the Rector moved fast. Having established that permission to change the use of the building would be forthcoming, he approached the Bishop for help, and the result was that the Church Commissioners agreed to lease the property at a moderate rent to the trustees of the St. Benet's Healing Centre on condition that they raised the money to rebuild the interior as offices. The idea was that the Healing Centre's administrative office would occupy the ground floor while the rest of the building could be leased to tenants who would pay our rent and cover the other running costs. In addition, removing the administrative office from the church would give us the chance to remodel the Healing Centreanother major expense. "Wonderful!" said the Rector. "Now, how do we raise one and a half million pounds to cover all our costs?" "Oh, that's peanuts!" I said without stopping to think. "Five or six million's routine in the fundraising game nowadays." A minute later I had been appointed director of the St. Benet's Appeal and set squarely on the road that led to Richard Slaney and the seamiest of his many friends. II I first met Richard Slaney in 1989 when I began to work for the law firm Curtis, Towers. We were both partners, but while I laboured in the corporate tax department, he was involved with the private clients; he specialised in the making of wills and the administration of estates. Educated at Winchester and Oxford he had a wide circle of well-heeled, influential friends which made him a desirable contact for a fundraiser, and I decided to lose no time in seeking his advice. I had no experience of fundraising, but I knew that at its most sophisticated level the buck-chaser was expected to combine high-grade diplomatic skills with the hide of a rhinoceros and theHowatch, Susan is the author of 'Heartbreaker' with ISBN 9781400041473 and ISBN 1400041473.