Death of a Financier

by John Francis Kinsella

'Yes, no problem.'

  'So what's this? Some kind of quarantine.'

  'Just precautions.'

  'What about the Russians?'

  'They should be okay, antibiotics and rehydration.'

  'So why all this?'

  'The problem is to identify the source and take measures to prevent it from spreading.'

  'So what do we do?'

  'Sit tight while I find out what's going on. What did they say it was by the way?'

  'Some kind of enteritis.'

  'Looks like a cover up.'

  'The problem is, did it start here or somewhere else?' said Ryan turning to Emma. 'Did you eat anywhere beside the hotel?'

  'Yes, in one of the seafood restaurants at the beach.'

  'Which one?'

  'I can't remember, they all look the same.'

  'Try to remember something about it.'

  'There were Christmas decorations.'

  That was not very helpful, all the restaurants and hotels were decked out with tinsel and decorations.

  'Anything else?'

  'Well it was the best looking, I mean Stephen was rather particular about where he ate.'

  'What did you eat?'

  'Tiger prawns and marlin.'

  'Is that all?'

  'Stephen took a fruit salad and we took a coffee.'

  'Okay we'll check that out.'

  'Did you see anything special in Kovalam?' Barton asked Ryan.

  'Special?'

  'I mean like this.'

  'No. Perhaps I should try speak to Swami and find out what's going on.'

  He dialled Swami's number. Nothing happened. He tried again, there was no access to the local network.

  'I think they've cut the phones.'

  'Is that possible? I mean what about the police?'

  'They have their own communication system, or perhaps they've just cut off foreign phones.'

  'Why?' asked Emma.

  'A news blackout, you can imagine what this will do for tourism if the news of what it really happening gets out!'

  At that moment Ryan spotted Oxana who was with a group of bewildered Russians.

  'What's happening,' he asked her.

  'I don't know, I don't understand. But my friend Tanya is very sick and I can't go into the room.'

  She was sharing a room with Tanya who was evidently infected and had been isolated. It would be at least three days before she was well again, if there were no complications.

  'We are going home tomorrow, what shall we do?'

  It was Friday and that was the question many of the guests were asking themselves. Ryan doubted whether the Indian authorities would allow tourists, potentially infected by cholera, to take their flights home to Europe and a dozen different cities from Moscow to London?

  *****

  Chapter 70

  Barton knew that hundreds of thousands of families were in danger of losing their homes given their huge mortgages and other accumulated debts. The banks being hard hit could not help them as they came out of the fixed rate term on their home loans. Even the smallest increase in bills or repayments could tip them over the edge and it was people like himself who had been responsible for signing up almost one-fifth of those who had taken out a mortgage over the previous two years and who now risked default and eviction.

  They included first time home owners and those who had remortgaged their homes drawing down on their hypothetical gains when property prices soared.

  Those most at risk were those who had put down a deposit of less than ten percent and those who had taken out a mortgage of more than twenty five years or had borrowed more that three and a half times their annual income. The first to fall would be those who were guilty of all three of the deadly sins, including Danny, who oblivious to the impending disaster was sunning himself by the pool at the Rainbow.

  Danny was what could have been called a successful salesman, he sold central heating systems, in and around the Southport-Liverpool area. He had made a good living from the housing boom over the last ten years. He himself owned a nice house overlooking the Birkdale golf course and drove around town in a new Range Rover, his wife Cilla, who worked in a local estate agents office, drove a bright new BMW.

  At thirty four he was doing well, the only black spot on his otherwise success story was that he had grown into the habit of spending more money than he earned, there had always been a delay between the payment of his commissions and his bills, which had drawn him into the habit of living on credit.

  They never whinged about the price of things, for them only the best was good enough. They had never known anything different. Since Danny had graduated from apprentice heating systems installer to salesman more than ten years earlier things had always looked up, there had never been a slow down in house prices and there had always been a constant demand for home improvements. It was much the same story for Cilla, three years younger than Danny, she had started work at the estate agents as a secretarial assistant as soon as she left school, an enthusiastic worker she had moved up in rank with more responsibility showing prospective buyers houses and was on commission.

  Almost everything they owned was on credit, the house of course, the cars, the new kitchen, the heating system, their home cinema, clothes and holidays. Once things were paid for, they upgraded to something bigger and better. It never worried them, working a little harder and earning a little more would solve any passing difficulty.

  Danny and Cilla had decided to get away and take a holiday in the sun, it was the in thing to do, in any case Christmas was always a quiet time in their respective businesses, people were spending money on buying presents and stocking up on food and drinks for the holidays, they were not thinking of new homes or home improvements.

  Friends had shown them holiday pictures of house boats and the Backwaters in Kerala, it looked different from Miami or the Canary Islands. Cilla decided it would be Kerala, she like the slogan God's own country. Naturally the holiday went on one of their many credit cards and they did not seem overly concerned about the price of the fourteen day holiday with three nights on a Backwater houseboat.

  They like millions of other Britons would be facing a New Year cash-flow squeeze, working their credit cards to the limit, their finances in tatters after the seasonal spending spree.

  The average Briton spent almost eight hundred pounds over Christmas on gifts, food and drink, parties and travel. Credit and belt tightening had become a British tradition during the month of January for a large part of the population after their year end binge, but the end of cheap credit boded badly for those used to easy money, with many facing the prospect of insolvency and bankruptcy.

  It was nothing new for those who like Barton worked in the finance and credit industries, he had seen a huge increase in the number of demands for those seeking better deals as they came off fixed-rates moving their mortgage elsewhere.

  The future was looking grim for the Dannies and Cillas of Britain with the growing evidence that consumers like them were beginning to desert the high streets and estate agencies as signs that a house price crash was slowly but surely taking form.

  A huge number like them would be faced with financial difficulties, from credit card refusal to the loss of their homes and insolvency as borrowing was stretched beyond its elastic limit. The least change in personal circumstances would lead them to disaster, job loss, divorce, illness or death in the family.

  It was no longer Barton's problem, his thoughts were elsewhere, he had read a report in the Guardian that the FBI was investigating banks in the US concerning possible accounting fraud and other misdeeds linked to the subprime collapse. Sure it was not the CID he reassured himself, but he knew how short a step it was to authorities back home copying anything that happened on the other side of the Atlantic.

  Criminal investigations into improper lending practises in the housing market would surely lead to West Mercian and inevitably to the likes of himself. Once the hunt was on, it would not be long
before his once faithful customers started to lodge complaints.

  Barton was unafraid of the Financial Services Authority, a toothless lion, whose prosecutions were so rare as to be almost inexistent in view of the unwritten financial market law of caveat emptor. Though when justice did close in, those caught in the trap were crucified and invariably abandoned by all and sundry, even their close friends and acquaintances. Barton had never taken advantage of any of those who had come to his firm, if they had made bad investments it had been their decision, but if the worse came to the worse their bad decisions could come back to haunt him.

  There were fraudulent unlicensed brokers in the City who used their investors' money to fund daily expenses, holidays and high living not to speak of poor investments. Those who were cheated into confiding their savings to unauthorised brokers invariably lost their money; by definition they had no recourse through the organisations designed to help them such as the Financial Ombudsman Service or Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

  *****

  Chapter 71

  Steve and Maureen Simonds looked like a couple of walking wounded sitting by the Rainbow's swimming pool. They were noticeable not only for their nice tans and good looks, compared to their older, paler and overweight neighbours, but also by their bandages, which apart from anything else looked seriously botched.

  They were from Ashford in Kent, he worked in a DIY centre and she as a secretary in a building firm. It was their second visit to Kovalam, which they had planned not only for a holiday in the sun, but also for dental care, not that there was much wrong with their teeth, it was more a question of cosmetic dentistry than anything else, teeth whitening for Maureen and a couple of crowns for Steve.

  Things had gone well until they decided like many other tourists to hire a motorbike. The problem was they had neither anticipated the difficulties of driving on Indian roads nor the difference in their driving habits and those of Indian truck and tuk-tuk drivers. Trying to avoid a truck pulling out of a field and an oncoming tuk-tuk driver they had ended up in a ditch, nothing really serious, just a few nasty cuts and grazes, but in tropical climates certain precautions were necessary to ward of a multitude of infections.

  Maureen's left leg was bandaged as was Steve's left elbow, a consequence of their untimely landing. In addition Steve had several stitches to his scalp. The first aid and antibiotics had cost them a few pounds, the taxis, the tow truck for the motorbike and repairs much more, in all they had well over two hundred pounds in expenses they had not catered for.

  Now they were bound to the swimming pool where they rested their wounds and made small talk with the other sun fans.

  'The dental clinic was great, everything brand new, the latest gear, much better than anything I've seen in the UK. I'm happy, there's no risk involved in a getting a new crown, less than on the road' Steve said laughing at his predicament.

  It was the policy of the national and state governments of India to promote medical tourism industry, it was a huge industry with certain private groups having thousands of beds in dozens of hospital. Competitive healthcare was big international business with countries such as Morocco, Tunisia and Thailand offering inexpensive medical services for Britons and Americans, who either could not afford the healthcare services of their own countries or those services had become incapable of providing the services they were created for.

  An American or a Briton could have dental care and a holiday into the bargain if he or she opted to have the work performed in India and not at home. The dental services of Kerala boasted root canal treatment cost ten times less compared to the same treatment in the USA.

  However, the world-class facilities tourists expected were not always what they got, which did not bode well for serious treatment like cosmetic surgery, hip replacement and more complex dental work.

  'They're so vain and unrealistic it's almost bloody laughable.'

  'I know what you mean.'

  'One of them interviewed on the news said the Yanks should have outsourced the job of shooting down their satellite to India.'

  'With what? A tuk-tuk with a booster!' Steve laughed.

  'Probably, but then one of them said, "We could have done the job for them from Bangalore for a quarter of the cost!"'

  'The trouble is that India is like China, for the moment they don't invent much, all their ideas and technology comes from us, the only thing they do is outsourcing.'

  'Yeah, even their doctors are trained in the UK.'

  'First they should look after their poor,' said the thin woman next to them lighting up her umpteenth cigarette of the afternoon. 'Just look at the place, no supermarkets, no frozen goods, no cans, no imported products, just souvenir shops and shoddy clothes, even in Trivandrum!'

  'You're right there luv, a full one quarter of the world's poor are here in India,' said her more knowledgeable husband. 'India's total annual exports are a drop in the ocean compared to the Japs who export a hundred times more to America alone.'

  'They've a long way to go mate.'

  'We're not one to throw stones, look at the state of us back home,' said Maureen, shifting her suppurating leg.

  'You're right there mi dear. In my opinion we're heading for a crisis with the housing thing and all that.'

  'A bloke I met in the dispensary told me that mortgage companies at home have announced they're winding up their 125% home loans. We were lucky, we just got in in time.'

  'You're first place?'

  'Yeah, brand new.'

  'Good interest rate?'

  'Great. Fixed rate for three years!'

  Steve and Maureen were like so many other first time home buyers who believed that ever rising house prices would help them to pay off their large loans.

  The crunch would come when their two or three year fixed rate term came to an end and repayments would rocket. The hopes of hapless borrowers finding a new deal were dwindling by the day as the bad news came in hard and fast. Many would lose their homes, unable to afford new interest rates, in spite of the much publicized rate cuts by the Bank of England that were not handed on to home owners.

  Steve and Maureen's 125% loan was composed of 95% of the house price in the form of a normal mortgage and 30% as an unsecured personal loan.

  *****

  Chapter 72

  Ryan was amused by the tourist brochure that described Kovalam as an enchanting strip of golden sands laced with the rich greenery of coconut palms, an evergreen and pleasant climatic beach resort, a dreamy place for tourists from all over the world, the Paradise of the South. Every brochure was filled with syrupy terminology: emerald green fields, azure blue waters and golden sands.

  The state had always been a backwater in more than one meaning of the word with little industry, that is until the discovery of modern package tourism and charter flights.

  All he had seen could have been summed up in an SMS to a girl friend back in the UK on New Year's Eve: 'a scruffy beach in the sun decorated with palm trees'.

  The narrow sea front promenade was decorated with long streaks of red betel nut expectorations, cigarette butts, bottle tops and fruit peelings. The shopkeepers regularly swept their shops clean, brushing out the dust, sand and cigarette butts onto the seafront promenade, those more demanding as to the cleanliness of their shop front went further sending the sweepings flying onto the beach.

  Francis told him you get used to it, after all betel nut stains were no worse than chewing gum, but Ryan was not convinced, it reminded him too much of the blood coughed up by tubercular sufferers he had seen in Africa as a medical student.

  As Ryan waited drinking his coffee in the Rainbow he was a little surprised to see an extended Swedish family meticulously going through the process of wiping their own and their children's hands with a disinfectant product at the table before eating. A few days before he had seen the same family at a beach restaurant the kitchen of which backed onto an abandoned paddy filled with putrefying rubbish, no doubt the kitc
hens and backyards being out of sight were out of the diners' minds. Their hotel's laundry service, situated in a dilapidated house behind the hotel, washed the sheets and towels by hand in well water and hung them out to dry above the rubbish strewn yard - perhaps the sun and the ironing had more powerful disinfectant properties than he had previously thought.

  The Swedes, so critical of hygiene standards when travelling in southern Europe, seemed oblivious of the dangers their children were exposed to on the beach or even in the hotel pool.

  One of the women who seemed to recognise him said good morning either out of politeness or out of curiosity. He smiled and she took it as an excuse to strike up a conversation.

  She was in on holiday with her family, parents, brother, sister, their spouses and a gaggle of children. There were at least ten or twelve of them. She informed him they were off for the day to a classy Ayurvedic spa where they would be treating themselves to a variety of massages and pseudo medical cures for their aches and pains.

  When asked what he thought of Kovalam he replied, a little too unenthusiastically, that it was fine. She had the self confident open manner of many Swedes, which not a few of their Nordic neighbours took for arrogance, whatever it was she felt free to ask any question she liked, discrete or indiscrete.

  'What is your business?'

  'I'm a doctor.'

  'Ah, what do you think of Ayurvedic medicine?'

  'Well, a lot of people seem to appreciate the treatment.'

  'I mean its medical virtues,' she insisted, not wanting to let him off with a noncommittal answer.

  'It's a very old traditional medicine, no doubt based on centuries of trial and error, so I'm sure that it has many good things to offer.'

  'Do you think it can cure everything the brochures boast about?'

  'Very frankly, no!'

  'You think our scientific approach is the only one?'

  'No, perhaps a judicious mixture of Western and traditional medicines would not be a bad thing. Personally I don't think traditional medicine can replace scanners, surgery or antibiotics.'

  'Of course, traditional medicine can't cure appendicitis, but I'm not sure about antibiotics.'

  Ryan shrugged, he wasn't really interested in her medical opinions.

  'What do you do?' he then said playing the game, as she inspected him.