On the Edge

by Michael Ridpath

  Freddie swiftly dealt out the coffee cups and sat down. Busy.

  ‘I won’t take much of your time,’ Calder said, taking his own chair. ‘I believe you deal with hedge funds.’

  ‘That’s right,’ the Swiss banker replied. ‘Since the equity markets took such a pasting hedge funds have become much more popular with our clients. You could say I’ve developed some expertise in them over the last couple of years.’ Another random bray.

  ‘Do you know anything about the Teton Fund?’

  Freddie smiled.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

  ‘Until a year ago, I wouldn’t touch it. Jean-Luc Martel’s a smart guy, but I thought he took too much risk. He also has a couple of questionable investors. But then after he broke the euro everyone wanted a piece of him. And if people want to buy, who am I to stop them?’

  ‘Have you placed any investors in his funds?’

  ‘A couple. And I’m working on some others. Actually, I’ve a major client who’s thinking of putting three hundred million in next month.’

  ‘Three hundred million? Wow. Who are they?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you that. Why these questions? Is there something wrong with the Teton Fund? Something I should know?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Calder replied. ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’

  ‘Planning to invest?’ Freddie said. ‘Because they won’t take direct approaches. I’m sure I can arrange something, although I believe they have a million dollar minimum.’

  Typical of a Bloomfield Weiss man to try to turn the meeting into a sale, but Calder couldn’t blame him. It made a useful cover story, though. ‘Yes. I’ve got to put my ill-gotten gains somewhere.’ Calder caught the hint of envy in Freddie’s eyes that one of his training programme contemporaries might have a million bucks to fritter away on a hedge fund.

  ‘You’re the trader, you know the kind of risks Martel takes.’

  ‘It’s always hard to tell from the outside. You said something about questionable investors?’

  ‘Yes. Originally Chalmet in Geneva sponsored the fund. Many hedge funds market themselves to investors outside the US. Much less regulatory hassle.’

  ‘I see. And are Chalmet questionable?’

  ‘Some of their clients are. They’re big in Latin America. And they do well with Eastern European money. As you know, the Swiss banks have had to become much choosier about who they deal with over the last ten years. Somehow Chalmet seem not to have caught up with the rest of us.’

  ‘So you think there’s drug money in the Teton Fund?’

  ‘It’s impossible to know where it comes from. But I do know two of the biggest investors, both of whom are distinctly suspect. There’s the Zeller-Montanez family from Mexico, and Mykhailo Bodinchuk.’

  ‘Bodinchuk?’

  ‘Ukrainian billionaire. Banks, oil, arms, brewing, aluminium. That’s the legal stuff. Also trades in drugs and prostitutes, on a massive scale. Has a reputation for getting his way in business. We won’t touch him.’

  ‘Bloomfield Weiss won’t touch him? He must be bad.’

  Freddie didn’t appreciate the dig. ‘We won’t deal with the Zeller-Montanez family either. They got caught up in a major money-laundering scandal a few years ago. You have to be careful these days, as I said.’

  ‘Are any of these people active investors in the Teton Fund?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, do they have any influence on what happens?’

  ‘I doubt it. For these guys, once the money reaches Switzerland it’s supposed to be legitimate, invested conservatively.’

  ‘I see. Well, thank you, Freddie,’ Calder said, getting up to leave. ‘It sounds an interesting opportunity. I’ll give you a call.’

  Freddie offered Calder his business card. ‘Think about it. If you’ve got a million to spare, I’m sure we can squeeze you in.’

  Calder left Langhauser’s office and walked up St James’s Street towards Green Park tube station. His phone chirped. It was Matt.

  ‘Look, Zero, I’ve got to be quick.’ Matt was whispering. Calder could hear trading-room noises in the background.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Nils said you were curious about what was going on in the Derivatives Group.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Something about Jen? And Tessa Trew?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well. I met some mates from Oxford in a pub a couple of months ago. I don’t know if you remember, but I was there the same time as Tessa. I hardly knew her, but a couple of these guys did. We were talking about the amazing transformation to blonde bimbo she had undergone since she came to London. Then one of the blokes asked me what had happened to her at Bloomfield Weiss. I said I didn’t know, all I knew was that she quit last year. He said he’d seen her just afterwards, and she was pretty angry. He’d asked her why she left Bloomfield Weiss for a two-bit Swedish outfit, and she said she couldn’t get out of there fast enough. In fact, she couldn’t get out of London fast enough. My mate tried to ask her why, but she wasn’t saying.’

  ‘Did she mention Carr-Jones?’

  ‘No. My friend wouldn’t know who Carr-Jones was, anyway. He said she just changed the subject. But he was pretty sure something had happened. Something pretty serious.’

  ‘She quit just after Jen died, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. Around then.’

  ‘Thanks, Matt.’

  ‘No problem.’

  As Calder took the tube back to Anne’s place in Highgate, he thought through what Matt had said. Nils would never be able to find out what was going on within the Derivatives Group, but Tessa would know. And if she had really left Bloomfield Weiss that angry, she might tell him.

  The very idea of talking to Tessa made his skin creep, but as soon as he got to Highgate he looked up all the major Swedish banks on the internet and phoned their head offices in Stockholm asking to speak to the derivatives department.

  At the third try he struck lucky.

  ‘Can I speak to Tessa Trew?’ he asked the man who answered the phone in Swedish.

  ‘One moment, please.’

  Calder steeled himself. He knew this wasn’t going to be easy.

  ‘Tessa Trew.’

  ‘Hello, Tessa. How are you?’

  She recognized his voice instantly. ‘Zero? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes. It’s me. How are you doing?’

  ‘What do you care?’

  Calder ignored her. ‘I’m going to be in Stockholm tomorrow.’

  Tessa snorted. ‘Don’t try to tell me you thought you’d look up an old friend.’

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ Calder said.

  ‘Well, I don’t need to talk to you, so goodbye.’

  ‘Hold on! I need to talk to you before I talk to the police.’

  Silence. But Calder knew he had just caught her before she hung up. ‘What are you going to talk to the police about?’

  ‘That’s what I want to discuss with you.’

  ‘I have nothing to discuss with you.’

  ‘Meet me tomorrow evening. Seven o’clock. The bar of the Grand Hotel. OK?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Suit yourself. I’ll be there. And if I don’t see you, I’ll fly back to London and speak to the police. There is full extradition within the EU, you know.’

  The phone went dead. Calder hit the internet again, this time looking for a ticket to Stockholm.

  23

  The view from the Grand Hotel over the harbour to the Old Town and the Royal Palace is glorious in summer, or even at midday in winter. At seven o’clock on a black February night, when the rain falls in giant drops of barely melted ice, it is non-existent. But inside, the bar was warm, sophisticated, murmuring with the elegant reticence of the Swedish establishment. Calder scanned the crowd. No sign of Tessa.

  He wasn’t surprised that she had no more desire to talk to him than he had to talk to her. But he hoped she would com
e, if only to discover what it was that he knew. Even with a cheap flight from Stansted airport, it was a long way to come for a drink. He finished his gin and tonic and caught the barman’s eye for another one. A woman with mousy brown hair and glasses approached him.

  ‘Can I have one of those?’

  ‘Tessa? I didn’t recognize you.’

  She was soberly dressed in a blue business suit, which hid rather than emphasized her figure. The blonde hair had gone, as had the makeup and the contact lenses. The weak chin was still there, and once he looked at her properly it was obvious who she was, but he had been fooled.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘No one from the Bloomfield Weiss days ever does. I don’t mind. That was the point.’

  Calder asked the barman for another gin and tonic. They made their way to the only free table.

  ‘So you left Bloomfield Weiss too?’ Calder said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘More pay? Guaranteed bonus?’

  Tessa leaned forward. ‘You said you’re going to the police. What about?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Don’t play games with me,’ Tessa said, steel in her voice. ‘Say what you have to say and then I’ll go.’

  ‘I think Justin Carr-Jones killed Jen Tan a year ago. I think you were involved somehow. And I think he killed Perumal Thiagajaran this year, although I’m prepared to believe you had nothing to do with that.’

  ‘Goodness, you have let your imagination run away with itself,’ Tessa said. She seemed more relieved than alarmed by his suggestion.

  ‘Did you think I was going to the police about something else?’

  ‘One year later. You had no evidence. I didn’t press charges. Nothing would have come of it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Tessa held his eyes for a moment, and then the steel left them. She stared down into her drink and mumbled something.

  ‘What was that?’ Calder said.

  ‘I said I’m sorry. For what I did.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It’s probably the worst thing I’ve done in my life.’

  Calder was surprised by the admission, but wasn’t inclined to disagree with her. ‘What about Carr-Jones? What went wrong between you and him?’

  ‘That was all a year ago, too. It’s in my past now. I’ve forgotten about it, or I’m trying to forget about it.’

  ‘A year isn’t that long ago.’

  Tessa shook her head. ‘I’ve got nothing to tell you.’

  ‘Come on, Tessa. You’ve apologized for what you did to me. All right. I accept your apology. It’s forgotten. It’s not you I’m after, it’s Carr-Jones. He must have done something a year ago to make you so upset. Why did you leave?’

  Tessa bit her lip and glanced at Calder. Her self-confidence seemed to have gone with the hair dye. Then she answered him. ‘I thought I could handle Justin. We’d worked together in Tokyo and I was doing well in London. He liked to treat me as a blonde bimbo, but I knew I was brighter than that. So did he, I think, although he’d never admit it. Justin doesn’t understand women at all, or the relationship between men and women, and I took advantage of that. He thought he understood me; he assumed I was winning business by promising sexual favours. He didn’t realize I was actually good at my job. But he gave me good bonuses and I thought, who’s taking advantage of who?

  ‘Justin sails pretty close to the wind, sometimes. He thinks you have to to succeed in this business and he’s probably right. He knew he could rely on me to help get things done. Nothing illegal, but things that some people might call unethical.’

  ‘Like claiming I raped you?’ Calder said.

  ‘As I said before, that’s the worst thing I did, but yeah, I suppose, like that.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, Jen hadn’t a clue. She didn’t understand Justin and thought the best way to deal with him was to fight him. For a girl so smart, and she was smart, she was dumb about that. Justin treated her horribly. He knew how to belittle her, crush her self-confidence. And she had no idea what to do about it.’

  ‘Didn’t you feel sorry for her?’

  ‘To be honest, not at the time, no. She had this holier-than-thou attitude about how women should get on in work. I believed you could do very well as a woman provided you were willing to adapt to the environment. I think women like Jen believe the environment should adapt to the woman. The world doesn’t work like that. It should, but it doesn’t.’

  ‘And then she died.’

  ‘And then she died. Justin had made her so miserable, she killed herself.’ Tessa fumbled for a cigarette in her bag and lit it. Calder thought he detected a slight shake of her hand. She took a couple of drags, giving herself time to regain her composure. ‘It made me realize that I had got everything wrong. So what if I earned a half-million-dollar bonus that year? Jen hadn’t played the game by Justin’s rules, and her punishment? She had lost her life. That wasn’t a game I wanted to play.’

  ‘Did you feel responsible?’

  ‘In a way, yes. I hadn’t done anything to her directly, but I did set you up so that Justin could discredit her. But after Jen died I couldn’t live with myself. I had to change my attitude to my work and that meant changing jobs. So I quit.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that you’re a different woman now?’ Calder couldn’t keep the cynicism out of his voice.

  ‘You can believe what you like,’ Tessa said. ‘I don’t really care. But I don’t do things by Justin’s rules any more. I might make a bit less money, but I’m still good at my job. And I can live with myself.’

  ‘Hm.’ Calder wasn’t sure, although the hair and glasses suggested this change was genuine and not just something concocted for his benefit that evening. ‘Why do people like Carr-Jones behave like that?’ he said. ‘I mean, he proved he could squash Jen, but why bother?’

  ‘He hates women, especially smart women.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Perhaps. He used to talk to me some nights, when he was pissed, especially when we were in Tokyo together. He hates his mother. She had affairs all the time when he was growing up. Still does. His father’s a railway clerk in Wales, did you know that?’

  ‘No,’ Calder said.

  ‘Anyway, she trampled all over him. Flaunted her affairs in front of her husband and her son. I think Justin got his ruthlessness from his mother. And probably his intelligence.’

  ‘Sounds as if they deserved each other.’

  ‘Probably.’ Tessa nodded her agreement.

  ‘Does he have any girlfriends?’

  ‘Not that I know of. But he likes sex with women. I think he prefers to pay.’ Tessa glanced at Calder. You’re wondering why I stuck with him?’

  ‘That thought had occurred to me,’ said Calder.

  ‘Simple. He’s brilliant at his job, a rising star, and I thought he would take me up with him. I didn’t realize then that the price was too high.’

  Calder was beginning to feel some sympathy for Tessa. At least she had asked herself the difficult questions. There were too many people at Bloomfield Weiss who never even got to that stage.

  ‘Did you hear about Perumal’s accident?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

  ‘I don’t think it was an accident. I think it had something to do with Jen’s death.’

  ‘And how did you come to that conclusion?’ Tessa asked, making no effort to conceal her scepticism.

  Calder told her about Perumal’s visit to him in Norfolk and Sandy Waterhouse’s impression that Jen had a plan to get revenge on Carr-Jones, something to do with the Teton Fund. He explained that the suicide text message had probably not been sent by Jen, but by her murderer. A man who might have been paid for by Justin Carr-Jones.

  Tessa listened closely. ‘You have no proof of any of that.’

  ‘No,’ said Calder. ‘But do you know of any problem Carr-Jones had with the Teton Fund?’

  ‘Justin never dealt with the Teton Fund directly. It was always
Perumal. Somehow he managed to keep his hands on that account.’

  ‘OK. What about Perumal then? Was there some kind of dispute with the Teton Fund? Something dodgy?’

  Tessa smoked her cigarette and stared at the crowd in the bar. The piano played a Sinatra tune. Calder gave her time.

  ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘I think there was.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Tessa glanced at him, hesitating. Then she seemed to come to a decision. ‘Do you remember the Teton Fund shorted the hell out of Italian government bonds a year ago?’

  ‘Of course I do. I was caught on the wrong side of that trade a couple of times before I gave up. The press blamed Martel for Italy quitting the euro.’

  ‘Well, Martel and Bloomfield Weiss did some huge derivative trades. They were called IGLOO notes, massively risky, lots of upside if the Teton Fund got it right, disaster if they got it wrong. Perumal fixed them up.’

  ‘How come I didn’t know about this?’ Calder said. ‘I was busy trying to trade against him.’

  ‘Come on, Zero. Since when have the Derivatives Group ever told the Prop Desk what they were doing?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Anyway, as you no doubt remember, the trade went against Martel, at least initially. He just put on bigger size. We were making tens of millions in fees. But then it came to the month-end reval, and do you know what number was put in for the IGLOO notes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ninety-eight and a half.’ Ninety-eight and a half implied an unrealized loss for the Teton Fund of only one and a half per cent.

  ‘And you think it should have been lower than that?’

  ‘Yes. About thirty points lower.’

  ‘Who did the reval?’

  ‘Perumal.’

  ‘What kind of loss did thirty points imply?’

  ‘If my numbers are right, about three hundred million dollars,’ Tessa replied.

  ‘Three hundred million!’ Calder digested the information. ‘If anyone had found out the Derivatives Group were helping a client hide a loss that large, the shit would have hit the fan big time. It would have killed Carr-Jones’s career stone dead. Do you think he knew what Perumal was up to?’