Chapter 10

At Gillard’s request, Channel 4 had sent ten CDs of footage about Empire of Spice from the series Britain’s Rising Asian Entrepreneurs, shown in 2013. According to the enclosed letter, only the first CD contained scenes from the final edit. The other nine, totalling 109 hours, were largely unused raw filming. Gillard gave them to Tweedledum and Tweedledee to watch. ‘You can do this at home,’ he said. ‘Four discs each, and I’ll take the last.’

‘What exactly are you looking for?’ Hodges asked. ‘Isn’t it just going to be a load of interviews and recipes, stuff like that?’

‘Inevitably there will be loads of dross. I talked to one of the producers who remembers quite a few areas of conflict about what they were allowed to film, especially at the start. Of course they did the usual fly-on-the-wall thing, getting the family used to the presence of strangers with cameras for the first month, until they stop being so careful about what they say. It’s a technique that apparently works on almost everybody, because it habituates them into behaving normally. What I’m after are unguarded moments of stress, tension, points of disagreement, that kind of thing. The disc I’ve got contains some boardroom stuff, which Channel 4 were requested not to use by Mrs Roy, so I’m hoping that will give me an insight into the politics of the place. What I would suggest is to initially run through it all on fast forward, and make a note of the scenes containing family or close associates, and then go back to those and watch them in full.’

‘All right,’ Hoskins said. ‘At least it is going to be more interesting than watching hour after hour of CCTV of commuters going up and down escalators, which is what I was doing last week.’

Gillard started with a boardroom meeting in which Mrs Roy was holding forth on expansion plans for a particular product line: Orissa Originals. Sitting next to her was Harry, looking every inch the consummate finance specialist. There were two production managers, both middle-aged men. He skipped through the PowerPoint presentation on fast forward, and resumed in the meeting when he spotted the camera on Prisha. Going back a little way, he watched as Prisha and Kiara took their seats, and a number of the other attendees were asked to leave. It was immediately apparent that what was going to happen now was more important than discussions about production.

The first sound was of Prisha slamming her briefcase on the table. Someone off camera asked her something, and she snapped back. ‘Never mind that, get me some coffee. Black with honey.’

Harry’s voice could be heard plaintively requesting calm. ‘It’s all right for you, isn’t it?’ Kiara retorted, off-camera. ‘You’re set fair whatever happens, with your stake in the business.’

‘All you need to do is have a baby, Kiki,’ Harry chuckled. ‘And make sure he’s a boy.’

‘Piss off, Harry,’ she replied amiably.

The lens swung to her, sitting on a typist’s chair, chewing a biro and resting her bare feet on the boardroom table in front of her.