On the Edge

by Michael Ridpath

  The waiter brought Calder’s eggs and bacon, and he tucked into them. ‘No, Tarek. Bloomfield Weiss has changed, and I haven’t changed with it.’

  ‘I disagree.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Bloomfield Weiss belongs to the likes of Justin Carr-Jones these days. And Tessa Trew.’

  ‘Actually she’s left. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No,’ said Calder. ‘Fired, I hope?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. She left of her own accord last April. I’m not sure, but I think she fell out with Carr-Jones.’

  ‘I thought those two were a team?’

  ‘She probably got sick of him trying to rub his face in her tits,’ Tarek said with a chuckle.

  ‘I doubt any woman could stand working for him for very long,’ Calder said. ‘Even Tessa.’

  ‘You’re right that there have always been assholes like him around,’ Tarek said. ‘And there always will be. But the place is still being run by Sidney, and he’s straight. He likes to make money, but he’s straight.’

  Sidney Stahl was the diminutive chairman of Bloomfield Weiss. He had little patience for bullshit and a reputation for straight talking. Everyone knew where they were with Stahl: if you made money you were in, if you didn’t you were out.

  ‘How long are you going to stay, Tarek?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. A while. Things are going quite well at the moment.’

  ‘But there’s a limit to how far you can get in an American investment bank, isn’t there?’

  ‘Why? Because I’m an Arab?’

  Calder shrugged. ‘Yes, frankly.’

  Tarek smiled. ‘Actually, I could leave Bloomfield Weiss and go into one of the family businesses any day. You know that. But I think I can run Bloomfield Weiss, or at least a big chunk of it. And I think people like Sidney will give me the chance. OK, he’s Jewish and I’m a Saudi, but I’ll make him money. I guess that’s why I like the Bloomfield Weiss way of doing things.’

  ‘Well, not me,’ Calder said. ‘I’m just glad I’m out of it.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Tarek said. ‘And I thought you were taking me to breakfast to ask for your old job back.’

  ‘’Fraid not. But I do have a favour to ask you.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Calder told Tarek about Perumal’s visit, his subsequent disappearance, and the police’s failure to find any connection between Jen’s and Perumal’s deaths. Tarek listened impassively.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Calder asked at the end.

  ‘I think you should drop it.’

  ‘Drop it? But I’m sure there’s something going on!’

  ‘No, you’re not. You were obsessed with the whole Jen thing last year and it obviously hasn’t left you since then. What happened to her was very sad, but it was a long time ago. You should forget about it. Perumal did something stupid on a mountain. That’s sad too. But it has nothing to do with you.’

  Calder frowned at him. ‘Are you trying to put me off finding anything?’

  ‘No. I’m trying to put you off looking. For your own sake. Sure, it’s a bit of a coincidence, but in the real world coincidences happen all the time.’

  ‘My gut tells me there’s something in this.’

  ‘And my gut tells me there isn’t,’ said Tarek.

  ‘Can you at least ask some questions for me?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry, Zero, I won’t.’

  Calder put down his knife and fork. A wave of disgust washed over him. Suddenly, he didn’t want to eat. ‘Just like you didn’t want to have anything to do with Jen.’

  ‘Carr-Jones shouldn’t have said what he said to Jen. But she shouldn’t have reacted in the way she did. Clearly she shouldn’t or she would still be alive.’

  Calder pushed back his chair, leaving bacon congealing in egg yolk on his plate and tossed a twenty-pound note on to the table. ‘Not you, as well, Tarek?’

  Tarek didn’t respond.

  Calder left the dining room in a mood of deep gloom, part anger, but mostly disappointment.

  Tarek, too, was in a bad mood all morning. He found Calder’s contempt hard to take. Tarek prided himself on his integrity; he needed it to combat the ‘sleazy Arab’ stereotype with which he was confronted every day. But he also prided himself on being realistic, and politically savvy. A year ago he had fought hard behind the scenes for Jen and for Calder, fought and lost. It was not the right battle to fight again. There was no percentage in digging up the Jen episode, none for him, none for Calder, none for her, none for Bloomfield Weiss. For all his intelligence, it was political realities like those that Calder failed to appreciate. He was a good trader, but he would never make it to any level of seniority in an investment bank. Whereas Tarek … Tarek thought he had a chance of going all the way.

  Just before lunch, Carr-Jones popped his head into Tarek’s office. ‘Got a sec?’

  Tarek nodded, and tried to banish his bad mood and put on his detached, implacable expression. That was always difficult with Carr-Jones.

  ‘Sure, Justin. Come in.’

  ‘Did you know Alex Calder has been stirring things up with the police? He’s been to talk to them about Perumal’s accident. And he still can’t let go of Jennifer Tan.’

  Tarek raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Has he asked you anything?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tarek. No point in lying.

  Carr-Jones waited. Tarek waited. He was quite happy to leave Carr-Jones’s fears unanswered.

  In the end Carr-Jones continued. ‘It can’t help, raking over all this again. It’s bad for the firm. It would be a good idea if you discouraged him.’

  ‘Would it?’ said Tarek, as enigmatically as he could manage.

  ‘Yes, it would,’ said Carr-Jones. And then, just as he was about to leave the room. ‘Oh, by the way. How’s brother Omar?’

  Tarek ignored him and looked at some papers on his desk. ‘Go screw your sister,’ he muttered in Arabic.

  ‘Another prayer?’ asked Carr-Jones. ‘I never realized you were so pious.’

  Tarek flicked the beads through his fingers, wondering what his misguided little brother was up to. No one in the family had heard from him for four years. But at some point Omar would make himself noticed. He always did. And Carr-Jones was right, of course. Once the powers that be at Bloomfield Weiss realized who his brother was, Tarek’s career would be effectively over.

  He repeated his earlier incantation to himself, louder this time. Then his phone rang. ‘Yes?’ he snapped.

  ‘Tarek? This is Jean-Luc Martel.’

  20

  Calder stood outside the small terraced house in the quiet street in Ealing and rang the bell. It was opened by a woman in a white sari. She was an inch or two taller than Perumal, a shade or two paler, and surprisingly pretty, although her eyes seemed sunken. She was only in her early twenties.

  ‘Mrs Thiagajaran?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hello. My name’s Alex Calder. I was a colleague of Perumal’s. I wonder if I can have a word with you?’

  Radha Thiagajaran hesitated, but then let him into a cramped front room. His eyes were immediately drawn to two large photographs of Perumal on a small table strewn with chrysanthemums, a stick of incense on one side and a lamp on the other.

  ‘Sit down, please. Can I make you some tea?’ Radha asked with a strong accent. Much stronger than Perumal’s.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Calder said. He decided to wait on the sofa while she made it. He thought it best to err on the side of formality with an Indian widow. He couldn’t help looking at the photographs, the pleasant smell of the incense invoking the comfort of ritual.

  She soon returned with a tray, and poured them both a cup.

  ‘I was very sorry to hear what happened to Perumal,’ Calder started. ‘Please accept my condolences.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Radha politely. But her face had that exhausted, washed-out sadness of the recently bereaved.

  ‘Perumal came to see me up in Norfolk the weekend before he
died. I’d like to talk to you about what he told me.’

  ‘So that’s where he went!’ Radha said. ‘He told me he was off to play golf with someone from work. He was away all day, but he left his golf clubs here. Poor Perumal, for someone so clever he could be so stupid! Of course, I could have assumed he was seeing another woman,’ she gave a half-hearted laugh, glancing at the photographs on the table. ‘But not Perumal.’

  ‘So he didn’t tell you he was coming to see me?’

  ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘You see, I think he might have been in some kind of trouble before he died.’

  ‘Not Perumal,’ Radha said firmly. Too firmly.

  ‘It might have had something to do with a woman called Jennifer Tan. She used to work at Bloomfield Weiss with us. She killed herself about a year ago.’

  ‘I do remember that. Perumal was quite upset. But he wasn’t in any trouble. He was doing very well at work. Very successful, isn’t it?’

  Calder realized that it would be impossible to work around the widow’s loyalty without alarming her. So he decided to alarm her.

  ‘I think Perumal might have been murdered.’

  ‘No!’ Radha put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘I’m not certain, but I think he had stumbled across something, something that got him into trouble. I think someone wanted him dead.’

  ‘But it was an accident, was it not?’

  ‘Maybe. That’s what I’m trying to find out. Have you been out to Jackson Hole?’

  ‘No,’ Radha said, dazed. ‘No. I was waiting until they found the body. They think he’s still under tons of snow out there, what’s left of him.’ She paused, fighting successfully to stop the tears. Calder waited. ‘We can’t even have a proper funeral. Perumal has a sister who lives in Vancouver, and she’s in Jackson Hole now. She’s coming here next week. Perhaps she will be able to tell me something. Murdered?’ She blinked, still confused by the thought. ‘Why? Who would have done such a thing to my poor Perumal?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think it might have had something to do with Jean-Luc Martel and the Teton Fund.’

  ‘I’ve heard of them. Perumal’s client. His most important client. Perumal got a good bonus last year thanks to them, and he was hoping for an even better one this year. We were planning to move from this place. Buy somewhere in Fulham. We had even looked at a couple of houses. But now … I don’t know now. Although Mr Carr-Jones has been very kind. He says there’s a good pension for me. But what good is a pension without Perumal? A pension is for old people, isn’t it? Perumal and I, we should have been old together.’ Her lower lip shook. ‘Murdered? No. It can’t be.’

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t,’ said Calder. He hated to upset her like this, but he had no choice. ‘It’s something I’d like to find out. Did Perumal mention any trouble with the Teton Fund?’

  ‘No.’ Radha bit her trembling lip and looked closely at Calder, trying to make up her mind.

  Calder helped her. ‘I know Perumal was an honest man. And he trusted me, which is why he came to see me a couple of weeks ago. He had second thoughts about telling me everything then, but given what’s happened, I wish he had. I might have been able to help him. If he was in trouble, I’d like to find out why.’

  The young widow smiled, a smile of tentative trust. ‘He never admitted there was a problem with the Teton Fund, but I could see there was. He seemed to have conflicting feelings about it, about his whole job, in fact. On the one hand he would get very excited every time he closed a deal or Justin told him he had done a good job. On the other, he was constantly on edge, worried about something.’

  ‘But you don’t know what?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was especially nervous before he went off to Jackson Hole. I knew there was something wrong. I asked him about it, but he just said it was a deal he was working on. There was more to it than that, I’m sure.’

  ‘I tried to call him at Bloomfield Weiss, and they said he was taking an extra couple of days’ vacation out there. Was that planned?’

  ‘No, not at all. We had a very odd conversation about that. He said he wanted to try snowmobiling. I said it sounded dangerous and he should come home. He said not to worry. But he sounded tense, very tense, almost frightened. And he has hardly ever seen snow, Mr Calder, let alone gone skiing or anything.’

  ‘Perhaps he just fell in love with it and wanted to stay on?’

  ‘I know him. I don’t think so. And why would he sound so scared? There was something else going on. Definitely.’ She smiled at Calder again. He sensed that he was winning her trust – she wanted to tell him more. ‘Perumal and I had an arranged marriage. I know that’s hard for you to understand, but it’s still quite common in my country. We didn’t know each other at all when we married two years ago. But Perumal was a good man, an honest man and a good husband. And not just because he earned a good salary. He listened to his mother too much perhaps,’ she smiled, ‘but I’m not the only woman to have problems with her mother-in-law. I’m trying to keep her away, but she insists on coming over. Until they find him, it’s so difficult.’

  This time she couldn’t fight back the tears. Calder waited while she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.

  ‘Do you have anyone here to talk to?’

  ‘Oh, yes. My own mother was here – she went back to India yesterday. I have younger sisters she needs to be with. There are many neighbours who have been very good. And Perumal’s sister will be here soon.’ She sighed and closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know what his mother will do if he has been murdered. She is so proud of him. She won’t be able to cope with it.’

  ‘Best not tell her, then,’ Calder said. ‘After all, we don’t know what really happened. And I wouldn’t mention it to any of the other people at Bloomfield Weiss. At least not yet. If I do turn anything up, I’ll let you know right away.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Calder. I’m sure something was wrong. I hope you can find out what. And if you can discover where his body is …’

  ‘I don’t know if I can do that. But I’ll try.’

  ‘Please do.’

  As Calder left the small house, he thought how lucky Perumal had been in his marriage. His mother had done a good job in finding him a wife. Perumal was becoming much more to Calder than just another derivatives geek, and his murder more than a key to explain Jen’s death. He deserved justice as much as she did.

  The bar near Covent Garden was crowded already. Calder had managed to nab a couple of seats with a view of one of the large screens suspended from the ceiling. Tottenham were playing Liverpool, kick-off was in twenty minutes, and he knew Nils would want to see the match.

  Calder needed help from someone inside Bloomfield Weiss. After his conversation with Tarek he realized that this might be harder to arrange than he had first thought. There were still plenty of people who worked there that he would classify as friends, but they were mostly his contemporaries, or senior to him. They might well share Tarek’s reluctance to ask difficult questions. What he needed was someone more junior, someone who could plug into the grapevine at a lower level, who could talk to Carr-Jones’s minions, rather than Carr-Jones himself. The obvious choice was either Nils or Matt, both of whom had been through the Bloomfield Weiss training programme and had friends in the Derivatives Group. Of the two, Nils had the most initiative, and so Calder had called him. But Nils was ambitious and Calder had no idea whether he would agree to help.

  He had been to see Stephanie Ward, Jen’s lawyer, that morning. She confirmed that Jen would probably have won a large settlement from Bloomfield Weiss, although she was determined to take the case all the way to the Employment Tribunal. The chances of a win there were good, but the Tribunal was always a bit of a lottery. The lawyer explained with some bitterness that she wasn’t surprised Jen had taken her own life. Suing a City employer was a stressful business: Jen was the third client who had killed herself.

  Calder had asked for the phone number of Jen’s American friend, Sandy W
aterhouse. As she searched for it, the lawyer asked him whether he wanted to pursue Bloomfield Weiss himself for constructive dismissal. Calder had declined, politely. His eye was on bigger crimes.

  His mobile phone rang. He pulled it out. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Alex? It’s Benton Davis.’ Calder had to strain to hear him above the noise of the bar.

  ‘Hello, Benton.’

  ‘I hear you’ve been asking about Perumal. And Jennifer Tan?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘The police have been to see me. I’ve set them right. You should know that this is not the kind of exposure Bloomfield Weiss needs.’

  ‘Benton,’ Calder said. ‘I don’t care what kind of exposure Bloomfield Weiss needs.’

  ‘We’ve looked into the matter internally,’ Benton said. ‘There’s nothing more to be done. And I don’t want you discussing this with any Bloomfield Weiss employees, do you understand me?’

  ‘I understand that you are trying to cover up a possible murder. And when I do find out what happened, Benton, I’ll make sure everyone knows that.’

  ‘I’m telling you to back off,’ Benton said. Even with the background noise, his deep voice was authoritative.

  ‘I don’t work for you any more, thank God,’ said Calder, and cut him off, thinking how good it was no longer to be beholden to the likes of that man.

  He saw Nils fighting through the crowd to get to him. Calder bought him a pint of lager, which Nils tucked into with practised ease. Nils’s stomach now hung out in front of him in a definite beer belly, and his two chins had turned into three. But he was pleased to see Calder and drank his health greedily.

  ‘I take it you chose this bar because of the match?’ Calder asked.

  ‘Dead right. I’ve got a lot riding on this one.’

  ‘I thought you supported Man United?’

  ‘I do. But you don’t make money by just betting on the team you support, do you? Especially not if you’re Danish.’ He grinned.

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Selling corners,’ Nils said, taking another large gulp.

  ‘What?’