On the Edge

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘Probably,’ Tessa said. ‘It wasn’t obvious. The structure of the IGLOO notes was so damn complicated and I don’t think any of the others on the desk thought much about it. I was curious, though, so I did my own back-of-the-envelope calculation, which is how I came to the thirty points. It was a big envelope, and I may be wrong, it’s only an estimate. But I’m damn sure it was a hell of a lot more than the point and a half Perumal stuck in the system.’

  ‘Would Carr-Jones have done the same calculation?’

  Tessa nodded. ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Could he have told Perumal to input the wrong prices?’

  Tessa considered the question. ‘I’ve no way of knowing,’ she said. ‘Maybe he did. More likely he spotted the discrepancy afterwards and decided it was a question he just didn’t want to ask. That would be typical of him.’

  ‘Do you think Jen could have found out?’ Calder asked. ‘Used it to threaten him?’

  ‘I don’t see how.’ Tessa frowned. ‘She left the group before we did the deal. Unless …’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless Perumal told her.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I do remember hearing something very odd a couple of days before Jen died. It was late, and there was hardly anyone else in the trading room. Perumal was at his desk talking to someone on his mobile. He seemed agitated, too agitated to notice me walking past. I heard him say something like: “Jen, please. Don’t do it. I beg you not to do it. I wish I’d never told you anything.” Then he saw me, hung up, and scurried off to finish the conversation.’

  ‘What did you think he was begging her not to do?’

  ‘As you can imagine, I was very curious at the time. When Jen jumped out of that window a couple of days later, I assumed he had been begging her not to kill herself. Or perhaps not to continue with the lawsuit. But it never really sounded right. Why was he even talking to her? Although Jen and Perumal were friendly enough when they worked together, they were hardly close. I couldn’t imagine Perumal being the sort of person Jen would turn to when she was contemplating suicide. And the “I wish I’d never told you anything” made no sense.’

  ‘Until now,’ Calder said. ‘If Jen had somehow got Perumal to tell her about the IGLOO reval and then decided to use it against Carr-Jones, Perumal would be in big trouble. Very big trouble. The kind of trouble that would put him in a panic and cause him to try to retract what he’d told her.’

  ‘It would also put pressure on Justin. As you said, if the false revals came out, he’d be finished.’

  ‘Maybe Jen tried to persuade him to back down on the lawsuit.’

  ‘If she did, it was a stupid thing to do,’ said Tessa.

  ‘Because she’s dead now.’

  ‘Right.’

  A waiter asked if they wanted some more drinks, but Calder ignored him. His brain was whirring. ‘Perumal would have made the connection, of course,’ he said. ‘Which is why he was suspicious about how Jen died.’

  ‘And why he came to see you.’

  ‘But why did he wait a year? And why was he killed now?’

  ‘Perhaps he decided to go to the police about Jen,’ Tessa said.

  ‘Or try to blackmail Carr-Jones himself.’ No wonder Perumal had seemed nervous to his wife. Why hadn’t he told him everything when he had come up to Norfolk? Stupid bastard. If he had, he might still be alive now.

  Tessa shivered. ‘God, I’m glad I’m out of there.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of Mykhailo Bodinchuk?’ Calder asked her. ‘Or the Zeller-Montanez family?’

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘They’re investors in the Teton Fund. They could be dodgy.’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t know them.’ Then her brow furrowed. ‘Maybe your imagination isn’t quite as wild as I thought it was. This worries me.’

  ‘Of course it does. Carr-Jones has killed two people and got away with it.’

  ‘Yeah. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Go to the police. Or the FSA.’ The Financial Services Authority was the regulator for the financial markets in London.

  ‘Oh.’ Tessa shifted uncomfortably on her chair.

  ‘You will talk to them, won’t you?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Zero.’

  ‘But why not?’ As Calder looked at her he could see the reason. There was fear in her eyes. ‘Come on, Tessa. You have to talk.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t. You said yourself, two people have died. I don’t want to make it three. Or four.’ She looked pointedly at Calder. ‘I managed to leave Bloomfield Weiss without making an enemy of Justin. I don’t want to make an enemy of him now. Especially now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. I won’t talk to the police. Or anyone else.’ Tessa’s voice was firm.

  ‘But what was all that stuff about how you’d changed? This is your chance to make up for what you did to Jen.’

  ‘Look. I’m glad I told you what I know. I owed it to you. And you can do with it what you like. Personally, I hope you screw the bastard. But I’m not going to risk everything by going against Justin. Jen did it. Perumal did it. I won’t.’

  ‘That’s cowardice, Tessa.’

  Tessa stubbed out her cigarette and got to her feet. ‘You can get yourself killed, if you want to. But I’m not going to. Thanks for the drink, Zero.’

  And she was gone.

  24

  ‘Can I get you something, honey?’

  Martel stretched out his long legs towards the glowing embers of the fire, and smiled at his wife. ‘An Armagnac, please, mon ange.’

  He watched as she poured some of the expensive golden liquid from a decanter on the bar. Nismes-Delclou 1914, bought at auction. She poured herself a glass of mineral water and came over to curl up beside him.

  She was dressed in a simple looking but desperately expensive black dress, silver and pearl earrings sparkling under her lustrous honey-coloured hair. God, she was beautiful. They had just returned from a party to raise money for the National Museum of Wildlife Art at one of the more spectacular ranches in Jackson Hole. Cheryl was the most stunning woman there, outshining two Hollywood starlets and three trophy blondes. What amazed Martel was that she never seemed to realize it.

  ‘Golly, that was tedious,’ she said as she snuggled up to him.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Martel. ‘There were some pretty serious people there.’

  ‘Yes. But all they ever talk about is money and what it can buy.’

  ‘That’s not necessarily true. They talk about travel. Culture. Charities. Their work, sometimes.’

  ‘But it’s always the smart places they’ve been to, the celebrities they’ve gone fishing with, their trip in a private jet to San Francisco just to see the opera, or the big deals they’ve done. Even the charity is a competition about who can give the most.’

  ‘Oh, come on, mon ange. Those people are very generous. And so are we. Do you want me to stop giving money to the museum? I donated a million dollars last year.’ He’d only done it because Cheryl was on the board. The least she could do was appreciate it.

  ‘No, not at all, honey,’ said Cheryl, kissing him on the cheek. ‘I think it’s wonderful that you do that. I just think that they shouldn’t boast about it, that’s all.’

  Martel had actually enjoyed the evening. Everyone apart from Cheryl had been in ‘elegant western’ dress. Martel thought he looked good in his cowboy boots and Stetson: when in Jackson he liked to get into the cowboy thing. He had had a great time bragging to anyone who would listen about his Italian exploits and he had got a kick out of speaking for fifteen minutes to the one bona-fide film star present. He was convinced that the woman with the largest breasts at the table had made a play for him. He had ignored it, of course, but it was nice to be noticed.

  ‘How was Denise’s party?’ he asked.

  Cheryl had returned from her own little trip to New York that afternoon, having been to a friend’s
thirtieth birthday party the night before.

  ‘It was fun. The people there were genuine. Real people.’

  Martel didn’t rise to it. Cheryl had taken a scheduled flight on principle, despite the fact that Martel had his own Falcon lined up with the others on the apron at Jackson Hole’s airport. Even so, real people didn’t just hop a thousand miles across the country to go to a party.

  Cheryl leaned across and brushed his lips with hers. He sensed the gentle pressure of her chest on his, smelled her perfume, felt her tongue flicking and teasing its way into his mouth. For a moment he felt a surge of arousal and pulled her down towards him. Then the doubts flooded in. Who else had she been kissing that day? Who had she seen in New York? He pushed her away and sat up straight on the sofa. She slid on to his knee.

  ‘Jean-Luc? Honey, what is it?’ She touched his cheek.

  Her face, the face that he loved, was so full of concern that for a moment he was tempted to ask her. Do you have a lover? Do you love me?

  But he didn’t. He feared he wouldn’t get a straight answer, and it would only make her angry.

  ‘I am sorry, mon ange,’ he said. ‘It is nothing.’

  ‘But it must be something, honey. Is it more problems with the fund?’

  Martel closed his eyes and nodded. It was the easy response.

  ‘The stress is getting to you. You’ve got to take it easy. Take a few days off. Take a month off.’

  ‘The markets never quit,’ Martel said. ‘And there is too much going on right now. There is always too much going on.’

  Cheryl stood up and moved away from him, her expression a mixture of sadness and irritation. ‘This isn’t good, you know. It isn’t good for you, it isn’t good for us. You have to do something about it.’

  Martel got up. ‘I think I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Don’t walk away from me like that,’ Cheryl said with sudden firmness.

  Martel ignored her. She grabbed his arm.

  ‘I said, don’t walk away from me. We have to talk about this, Jean-Luc.’

  Martel spun round to face her, unable to control his anger. ‘You Americans have to talk about everything, don’t you? Analyse everything. Well, talking won’t fix this, Cheryl.’

  ‘And what will, then?’ Anger burned in Cheryl’s eyes as she faced him.

  ‘Loyalty, perhaps. Trust.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Martel, turning away from her, annoyed that he had been goaded into saying more than he had intended.

  She grabbed his arm again. ‘You have to tell me what you mean by that. Are you accusing me of something?’

  Martel shook her arm off him roughly and marched up to bed.

  ‘You can’t just run away, Jean-Luc,’ Cheryl called after him.

  Much later, when they lay next to each other, back to back, a cold wall of silence running down the centre of the bed between them, Martel thought about what she had said. She was right, he couldn’t run away. He had to know. He found himself torn between anger that she had probably deceived him, and a yearning to win her back. It was the uncertainty that was killing him. He didn’t know that she was cheating on him. But he couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t heard that cough.

  Pohek had followed Cheryl to New York, and Martel was meeting him early on Monday morning. He was counting on Pohek to put him out of his misery one way or the other.

  And then there was that other matter. When he had blamed his tension on the Teton Fund, he hadn’t been entirely untruthful. For once the markets were treating him kindly. The Nikkei was moving up slowly and steadily to the point where his unrealized losses were only a couple of hundred million. In a few days, he’d be in profit. And then the fun would begin.

  But he had discovered something else, something that threatened to unravel everything, something that needed to be dealt with sooner rather than later. At least now Martel knew how.

  It was a beautiful morning. The snow on the upper slopes of the Tetons shimmered in the early sunlight, warm and inviting, although the tree-clad base of the rocky wall was still in cold shadow. The sky was clear, except around the Grand Teton, where clouds came and went, descending and rising in varying shapes, sometimes forming a white mushroom, sometimes a cluster of greying cotton balls, sometimes a long flat wedge hovering above the mountain. The slopes would soon be crowded: already enthusiastic skiers were making their way across the valley floor to the lifts at Teton Village. It might be early in Wyoming, but it was late afternoon in Kiev. Martel took a deep breath and picked up his phone.

  As he waited to be put through he felt his chest swell with a rush of power. He was becoming used to the power of billions, the power of being able to buy whatever he wanted, the power of bringing whole countries to their knees. But wielding the power to determine who lived and who died was a new experience. He found it intoxicating.

  He remembered the first time, the first step, the first fix. It had been in Switzerland twelve months before.

  They had been skiing all day, and Martel had done a good job of slowing to his guest’s pace. But by the afternoon, his patience left him, arid he whipped down a narrow black run leaving his companion far behind. He paused at a ridge overlooking the town of Saint Moritz far below and turned to watch the other man making his way down the slope slowly and gracefully, as if to demonstrate that he hadn’t been competing with Martel. It was a mistake to show up his client like that, but Martel couldn’t help it. With all that was going on, he sometimes just wanted to point his skis straight down the mountain and push off.

  He took some deep breaths of the Alpine air, subtly different from that of the Rockies. He loved the skiing in Switzerland, even if Saint Moritz was not quite as challenging as Jackson Hole. It just had more class.

  His companion joined him. Mykhailo Bodinchuk was a big man in a yellow ski suit with a chubby pink face. He was only in his early thirties, and he looked even younger, but he was one of the largest of the fifty or so investors in the Teton Fund. Like Martel he was successful. Like Martel he was unorthodox. But Bodinchuk required a different set of skills to succeed in the Ukrainian business world.

  ‘There’s a bar down there,’ Martel said, pointing down a gentle slope to a small wooden hut. ‘Shall we have a beer?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Bodinchuk.

  They swept gracefully down the slope, took off their skis and unfastened their boots. Martel bought his guest the beer.

  Two bulky skiers followed them in and propped up the bar, ordering a coffee between them. Bodinchuk was a careful traveller. Even on the ski slopes he didn’t like to be alone. He and Martel usually met in Switzerland, the country Bodinchuk used as a base for his international investments. In fact, they had been introduced to each other through Chalmet in Geneva.

  It was still mid-morning and there were few people in the bar. Martel’s mouth was dry and he took a swig of beer before he spoke. ‘The euro trade is looking good,’ he said, lying with confidence.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Bodinchuk replied in passable American.

  Martel hesitated. His heart was beating rapidly and his mouth was, if anything, drier. He was about to go a step further than he had ever gone before. He had tried everything to keep the Teton Fund afloat. Almost everything. But then had come the news from London that threatened to blow it all apart. He had thought long and hard about what he was about to ask his client, but there was no other way. No other way.

  Another swig of beer. ‘Actually, Mykhailo, I would like your assistance on a small matter.’

  Bodinchuk rolled his eyes. ‘Jean-Luc, when I invested in your fund three years ago it was supposed to be one of my legitimate businesses.’

  ‘Which has given you a handsome return. Three times your money at the last valuation.’ That was three times a hundred million dollars, serious money even to the Ukrainian.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Bodinchuk with a smile. Martel knew Bodinchuk liked him. Martel’s enthusiasm for turning
one dollar into two by playing the markets intrigued Bodinchuk, whose own methods for making money were a little more direct.

  ‘It’s only a small thing,’ said Martel. ‘And for you it would be easy.’ He glanced round the small bar. There was a couple in the far corner, the barman was cleaning glasses, only the Ukrainian minders were glowering at him. ‘Let me explain. There’s a woman who works for an investment bank in London. Her name is Jennifer Tan …’

  Bodinchuk listened, listened and acted. A year later there had been another meeting in Switzerland, Geneva this time, and Perumal Thiagajaran had been the subject of their conversation. Yes, Mykhailo Bodinchuk was proving himself the model of a proactive investor.

  Now the Ukrainian’s voice crackled down the line from Kiev. ‘Hello, Jean-Luc. Is the market screwing you again?’

  Bodinchuk sounded rushed. Martel was put on his guard. ‘No, Mykhailo. The market is coming back our way. You will be glad to hear I haven’t lost my nerve. We still have a massive position. I’m confident that in a couple of months we’ll be sitting on the most profitable single trade in hedge-fund history. We’re talking billions.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Bodinchuk said, warming a little. ‘You have guts. You stick to your opinions. I like that.’

  ‘It works,’ said Martel.

  ‘Yes, as long as it works.’ Did Martel catch a hint of menace in that last comment? Martel knew that if the Teton Fund were to go under, he would lose more than his fortune, his ranch, his reputation and his self-respect. He would also lose the confidence of his investors. In Bodinchuk’s case, that could be fatal.

  ‘Mykhailo, there is one small thing you can help me with. I’ve heard someone is stirring up trouble at Bloomfield Weiss again. A man called Alex Calder who used to work there as a bond trader. He’s asking questions about the death of the Chinese girl, and the Indian. Apparently he has discovered a link to the Teton Fund.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I wonder if it’s time to … er … silence him?’ Martel felt a delicious thrill as he said these words. He felt like one of those gangster bosses in the movies. Here he was deciding who lived and who died.