That’s the trouble with the rich – they can’t imagine what it’s like not to have money. Mary and Ben know because they once had money – or at least well paid staff jobs when newspapers used to dish those out, complete with expenses. She never really thought about what she spent. That for her is now the definition of luxury. Not to have to give money a second thought.
If she’d been clever she’d have got a mortgage back then, but then she was out of the country so much, and now it was out of the question. She and Ben rent in Streatham, a first floor flat on a quiet side road, with (thank goodness) quiet neighbours. That chunky watch Harry was wearing would have covered six months’ rent.
She and Ben had been made redundant by their respective newspapers within six months of each other – sacked and then rehired for shift work. They’d moved jobs many times over the years so there wasn’t much of a pay-off – enough to put a deposit on the rented flat and pay for the first three months. God, how depressing. And hurtling towards forty the pair of them.
Stockwell Station comes and goes. They had started looking to buy somewhere – but London, even the grotty bits that no one would have considered five or ten years ago – they’re now beyond their reach. Who would have imagined Peckham would become trendy? Or Hoxton? Somebody must have imagined it – and made a killing in the process.
As for Mary and Ben. Self-employed, no deposit, forget it. They’d go abroad. A two-bed in Beirut with views of the Mediterranean; there must be some bargains to pick up in Kabul now the Americans have gone. The rapidly decelerating train rattles in to Brixton Station rattled. End of the line.
CHAPTER NINE
Max leaves Verbier while it’s still dark, and reaches Geneva as a sunny morning emerges from behind the shadow of the mountains. The roads into town are all billboards for private banks and expensive watches – Max’s kind of products.
Mahmoud Hakim Al-Wadhi turns out to be a young man barely in his twenties, Max guesses. He has a patchy, fledgling moustache, perhaps to try and make him seem older. With him is a tall, silver-haired man and a short bobbed, blonde woman in her thirties. He, it transpires as he whips out his loupe to inspect the stone, is an Egyptian gemologist; she is a Swiss lawyer.
The lawyer looks at the paperwork – certificates from the Gemological Institute of America and the European Gemological Laboratory, as well as a Kimberley certificate to certify that the diamond is ‘conflict-free’.
“It’s from Botswana,” says Dieter, who is also present at the bank with Gretchen, who’s wearing a beige business suit today.
“The certificate of provenance, I see, was signed in Guinea,” says the lawyer.
“That’s normal,” says Dieter. “It just means it was processed in Guinea.” The lawyer nods.
“Well, it’s a nice stone,” says the gemologist.
“Isn’t it just,” agrees Max, who has not spoken until now.
* * *
Harry opens his front door, flicks the hall light switch and begins to stride towards the beeping alarm box. Then he notices the animal, scuttling quickly but unhurriedly along the length of the hallway skirting board, dragging its tail behind it. A rat. So, it was a rat. “Shoo,” he says involuntarily, the hairs rising on the back of his neck. Surprising the things that come out of mouths at times like these.
Where has it gone to? The alarm beeps are becoming urgent now, so he taps in his code. Then he switches on the living room lights and looks around, and then the kitchen lights. Nothing. His breakfast things still lie on the table – a dirty cereal bowl, a plate off which he’d eaten his toast. Crumbs and smears of butter and jam. Christ, no wonder he has rats. He needs a cleaner; Max had always said so. But hiring cleaners is not something that comes easily to Harry. After all, his mother is one.
He picks up the bowl and plate and places them in the dishwasher. He is wiping down the oilcloth when his phone rings.
“Harry… buddy boy, we’re on a roll,” announces Max in a thick voice. He sounds drunk, and Harry can hear someone, a man, in the background and some music. Simon?
“The Saudi… he’s agreed to buy the diamond. Five million dollars. Once we’ve paid off the dealers our cut’s just under half a million… four and half hundred thou’. I’ve done the maths: it’s just over three for me, and a little over one for you. Not bad, eh?”
Three-to-one was their agreed share on all their side-dealings, and Harry thought that was pretty generous in the circumstances. After all, when all is said and done, he is always just tagging along for the ride. Somehow Max thinks his contribution amounts to more than this, when all Max really ever wants is some company.
“Fantastic… fucking brilliant,” says Harry, trying to match Max’s enthusiasm. One hundred thousand pounds. For what? What worried Harry was what was coming next.
“And what’s more Dieter has an absolute beauty lined up. Could be worth more like six million,” says Max.
“Right. Strike while the iron is hot…” he says without enthusiasm.
“Exactly,” says Max, slurring the word so it sounds more like ‘ecshactly’. “And this time we’re going it alone. No backing – just us. Time for some serious money. We’ll sell our houses, sell our bodies for sex, do whatever it fucking takes so we don’t need financing, and buy the bloody thing ourselves. And then we’ll keep all the profits. A million each, easily. And then we’ll take it from there. Two or three deals like that each year, sell the company to some dimwit German and we fucking retire by the time we’re forty. Fuck it all.”
Simon, or whoever was in room with Max, echoes with a shout: “Fuck it all!” Harry realises the song they’re listening to over there in Switzerland is ‘Brothers in Arms’ by Dire Straits. Harry always teases Max about his cheesy taste in music, and Max being Max, instead of getting defensive, takes an interest in the music Harry likes: Pulp and Oasis from his uni days, jazz and even classical. Not that Harry listens to music much these days.
Simon is singing along, badly.
“Gotta go buddy,” Max is saying. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Did you speak to Rachel?”
“Yes, she’s gone shopping… with her mate Jess… in Dubai.”
“Ha! Fuck it all,” says Max.
“Yes, fuck it all,” says Harry.
CHAPTER TEN
For nearly two weeks nothing seems to happen. Outside every day has been the same – an unbroken grey sky occasionally grows even darker and threatens to rain, but mostly it just remains a pale, implacable grey. A cold wind too: everyone has stopped talking animatedly about spring, and what their plans are for Easter. In fact they don’t discuss the weather any more at all; they have returned to winter mode, sullen and grimly determined.
The trees, just starting to burst their buds earlier in the month, are now in suspended animation, waiting for further orders. Harry overheard Fiona at the office the other morning telling the trader Cyril that she’d heard on the radio that it is going to stay like this until July. Cyril shrugged his French shoulders and in that French way said, “I never go outside anyway.”
European mid-cap equities seem to be taking their cue from the weather; they too are stuck. The markets everywhere seemed to have stalled, unsure of what direction to take. The uncertainty over Brexit isn’t helping. They might as well all go home.
In fact the only thing that seems to be shifting is Harry’s house. On Max’s instruction he told the eager man from the estate agency that he wanted cash buyers only and a quick completion, for which he’d price the house at fifty grand cheaper than similar houses in the area. The man said he had someone perfect lined up, an older couple who were downsizing from Notting Hill, and that he’d get them round as soon as possible. In the meantime Harry phoned a pest-control company.
He hasn’t seen his rat, although he can hear it. The creature seems to have taken up residence in the ceiling space above the kitchen, and is gnawing on something. Perhaps it’s the electrical wires and it will burn itself to a frazzle. It stops when Harry ban
gs on the ceiling with a broom.
He hasn’t heard from Rachel since she went to Dubai, and that, he thinks, is probably for the best. And there’s been no wedding invitation from Mary, but he texts her anyway to thank her for the other night and to apologise that he seemed so out of sorts. She texts back almost immediately with a smiley emoticon and a kiss. Harry starts to get a hard-on.
“Is Rachel okay about selling up?” he asks Max when they slip out for some sushi at lunchtime.
“She hates that flat… hates Baron’s Court. She wants to move to Notting Hill. A few of these trades, and we’ll be able to afford Notting Hill.”
Max’s estate agent had arranged an open day the previous Saturday and seven offers came streaming in before the end of play – all of them for more than the asking price. He selected the four cash buyers who were ready to move and told the agent to choose the one who could complete the quickest. Two of the prospective purchasers say they can complete by the end of the month – that’s little over a week away. Max’s solicitor seems doubtful whether that’s possible, so Max phoned Simon’s solicitor who said it was perfectly possible. He got the business.
The reason for their haste is the diamond. The diamond. The big pink one that is going to be his and Max’s first solo deal, without investors. Their own money was going to buy this gem, and they were then going to reap all the profit when the soft, big-lipped Saudi took out his camel-skin purse and bought the thing.
And they were going to stay liquid – pump the cash into another stone, and then another, and then another. And when they’d exhausted all of that, then they would stand back and look at their mountains of cash and decide what to spend it on. A new-build penthouse beside the Thames, thinks Harry, with no mortgage and no rats. And a place in Barbados for the winters.
For now they are all going to Switzerland. Max, Harry and Simon – in Simon’s jet. Harry offers to take a scheduled flight, but Max insists they stay together. Simon doesn’t like Harry and thinks there’s something fishy about him, and there will be bullying questions on the flight over, unless Harry can extricate himself.
Simon isn’t someone who just thinks things, he says them too, which, as long as you aren’t the one he is saying things about, can be quite funny. Simon is fun, but he is also dangerous. Fuck it, a few deals like the big pink one and it wouldn’t matter what Simon, or anyone else, thinks of him. Fuck them all, as Max liked to say.
Still, he feels uneasy. Harry never expected to be in the slightest bit wealthy. Just having some money left over at the end of the week for a few drinks would have been his idea of being rich before he bumped into Max at that fateful night in the Sloaney Pony.
He had accumulated wealth just by being Max’s friend and – okay, he had to face it – paid companion. Money by osmosis. But now he was expected to start playing the game for real, become one of the big boys, put his balls on the table, or whatever it was that Simon liked to say. Simon didn’t think Harry had any balls.
They are going to fly out to Simon’s chalet in Verbier to ski for a couple of days. Harry can slip and slide down the nursery slopes – he never really got into skiing, or any other sport for that matter – while the other two exhausted themselves on the black runs, hopefully not breaking anything because on the Thursday they had a rendezvous at a small luxury hotel in the centre of Geneva. The Arab is in town and wants to see this diamond Max is so full of. Max has even taken to calling it the Queen of the River – as Dieter had joked.
Two days skiing, mountain air, and then a million dollars in the bank. Life is sweet, thinks Harry, who has just returned from a meeting with a nervous Japanese industrialist who insisted they drink saki. There had been much smiling and frantic nodding and drinking of saki, and now Harry doesn’t feel good for anything. Just scrolling through contacts on his phone, and feeling a little horny when he reaches r for Rachel. But that last time had been such a disaster.
He gets up suddenly and walks into reception. “I’ve got to go home; I’ve got an estate agent coming round,” he lies to Fi on reception.
“How exciting,” she says, and sounds as if she genuinely thinks that it is. In what universe is meeting an estate agent exciting, he thinks. Max is also out with a client, and Tim and Cyril are both identically posed, leaning back in their chairs with their hands behind their heads.
“Tell Max I’ve got some house business to sort out. I’ll be back in tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, of course, Harry,” says Fi brightly. “See you tomorrow.”
Harry decides to let the train pass Baron’s Court. Rachel won’t be there anyway, she’ll be at work, but in Harry’s current muzzy state of mind, the compulsion remains. He changes at Hammersmith and gets off at Ravenscourt Park, and as he starts walking back to his house he realises he hasn’t been back from work this early in a long time.
It’s a lovely afternoon; the weather that had been grey and cold for weeks on end has now suddenly switched, and markedly for the better; spring had recommenced. He can smell it as he walks up along the side of the park, he can see it in the pink blossom on the trees planted on the pavement – trees which annoy him whenever it’s raining and he has to navigate past them with his umbrella.
He passes a primary school playground where children are yelping and screaming in the unaccustomed warm sunshine. A small boy with a mop of sandy hair has his face pressed against the bars of the playground fence and as Harry passes he asks him to throw back his tennis ball, which has evidently been thrown or hit over the top and now rested by the back wheel of a parked car. Harry picks up the ball and throws it up high over the fence. “Thank you” the boy says and rushes back to his game.
As he puts his key into the lock of his soon-to-be-no-longer front door he notices a neighbour – a woman in her seventies perhaps, with a green cardigan and hair in a bun, putting something in the bin in her front garden. “Oh, hello,” she says. “Lovely day isn’t it.” Has he met her before? Should he know her name?
“Beautiful isn’t it?” he agrees.
“There was a man here earlier looking for you – from the police,” says the woman, obviously happy to have this important news to deliver. “He left you a letter.”
Slipping into the hallway and heading off the alarm, which has begun its beeping sequence, Harry notices the card on his doormat. It’s from a DC Andrews of Norfolk Constabulary, asking for Harry to get in touch.
* * *
Rachel is in the kitchen, wearing black jogging bottoms and a black vest, her bare shoulders damp with sweat, and drizzling wasabi dressing into the box of quinoa, artichoke and pomegranate salad she has bought from the food hall at Selfridges. She takes a deep gulp from a large glass of red wine just as Max steps behind and spreads a hand across one of her bottom cheeks, and then up round her waist and towards her breasts.
“You can forget that,” she says.
“Not fair,” he says in a mock petulant child’s voice, keeping his hand where it is, running his fingers along the hard base of her sports bra. Rachel doesn’t move, merely lifts a fork full of salad towards her mouth.
“God, I hate quinoa”, says Max, screwing up his face. “When is someone going to blow the whistle on that stuff and admit that it’s disgusting?”
“When’s the last time we went out for a nice meal together? When was the last time we did the River Cafe?” says Rachel, squirming and brushing away his hand. “You and Harry have all these lovely lunches at Scott’s, Nobu and places like that and I always have to eat on the hoof like this.”
Max removes his hand with a sigh.
“Well?” she asks, sitting down cross-legged on the sofa by the TV.
“You’re right,” he says, pouring himself a glass of red.
“It’s like you two are the lovers. Or the old married couple.”
“I know… I know… the trouble is I just don’t fancy old Harry. Shame I’ve got to spend three days in Switzerland with the old bugger.”
“Old bugger… you sai
d it. Switzerland? Is this the diamond? Any news on the flat?”
“We’ll get a sale all right and when I’ve sold off this diamond we can move to Notting Hill. Promise. I can order sushi, if you like. Or an Indian?”
“Too late… I’m eating it now. Seriously, why don’t you just stick to what you’re good at – swindling investors with your fees? Anyway, that Saudi. Do you even know his name?”
“Bin something”
“Bin Laden?”
Max slips beside his wife on the sofa, who shuffles along to make room. “Do you like him? Harry, I mean…”
“No,” says Rachel without missing a beat.
“No, nobody seems to like him except me.”
* * *
The evening is still warm and full of the promise of spring, but Harry is glad of the roaring fire in the Abergavenny Arms, his local pub – or rather a popular and much-garlanded gastro-pub that attracts visitors from all over London. They come from far and wide but Harry, who only lives two streets away, has only been here once before, when he and Max had been house-hunting back in 2007.
“Brilliant,” said Max. “A great neighbourhood pub like this is worth at least a hundred grand on the price of local houses. That posh butcher should help as well.” Harry hadn’t noticed the posh butcher.
A lot of people are standing outside, smoking, laughing and enjoying the unseasonable mildness, which means that there are tables to choose from inside. Harry selects one of the array of colourfully named draft bitters, and takes a table near to the fire. He feels very strange and he doesn’t like it.
Nicholas Mooreland has been locked safely in Harry’s past for a long time now – the key memories have been re-played so often that they had come to seem like scenes from a film that he has seen so many times that he knows it off by heart; they have taken on the qualities of a story, and settled into Harry’s own private mythology. He can deal with it.
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