‘Your wife. And another man.’
‘Who?’
‘The money,’ Pohek said.
Martel was tempted to beat the man to pulp and just take the envelope, but reason prevailed. Pohek’s knowledge could do Martel serious damage. Pay him and he’d keep quiet. It was the easiest way.
Martel sighed and scribbled out a cheque. ‘There.’
Pohek smiled, examined the cheque, folded it and put it in his pocket. He handed Martel the envelope.
Martel grabbed it and began to slit it open with his finger. Then he stopped. His heart was racing. Inside was what he had most feared: evidence of Cheryl’s infidelity. He felt an urge to stuff the envelope back into Pohek’s hands and send him off to Denver. What he didn’t know couldn’t destroy him. Couldn’t destroy his marriage.
Except he did know. The cough he had heard over the phone had been real. Cheryl was really seeing another man. These things had happened, were still happening, and he knew about them. He couldn’t simply chase that knowledge away.
He took a deep breath and opened the envelope. There were at least a dozen prints of Cheryl with someone else. Someone he knew only too well.
Vikram.
‘When were these taken?’
‘Twice. The day you went off skiing in the helicopter. And yesterday afternoon at Vikram’s house.’
Martel flicked through the pictures. In none of them was there any actual physical contact, beyond the holding of hands. They certainly weren’t caught in flagrante. But even in black and white in two dimensions there was no mistaking the looks they were exchanging.
That was the worst, the most painful kind of infidelity.
Martel closed his eyes. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘You’ve got your money, just go.’
‘Do you want me to carry on following them? I’m sure I can get some better evidence. Give me a couple of days.’
‘I said, go!’
Pohek went. In a few seconds his car was speeding across the flats back towards Jackson. Martel was glad to see the back of him. That last comment with its implication that in the next forty-eight hours his wife would commit enough adultery for Pohek to be sure of snapping her at it particularly angered him.
He sat there for half an hour, the envelope on the seat beside him, staring over the flats towards the Tetons, looming up into the clouds. They had betrayed him, those mountains, his giant friends. They had let his wife and his protégé turn him into a cuckold right beneath their gaze.
Martel was angry. It wasn’t the sudden flash of anger that he might have expected to feel after what he had just seen. It was a slow, steady burn, building up the pressure inside him, a fist twisting his guts tighter and tighter, half a turn at a time. He had to fight back. Fight against Vikram, against Cheryl, against Japan, against Bloomfield Weiss, against Calder, against Pohek, against the whole damn lot of them. Most men, he knew, would collapse under the enormous burden that the world was placing on him. But not Martel. He was one of the most powerful investors on earth, no, the most powerful. Nations had crumbled before him. He wasn’t like most men. He could stand up against the world, fight it and overcome it.
Martel pulled out his cell phone, checked for a signal and called Kiev.
Vikram would get what he deserved.
34
The taxi dropped Calder and Sandy off outside a small cream-painted clapboard house in a tree-lined street of small cream-painted clapboard houses. Calder asked the driver to wait. They were in New Westminster, a suburb of Vancouver. The temperature was well above freezing, but the sky was grey and it had just rained. The flight from Jackson Hole had taken them four hours, including a connection in Salt Lake City, and they had taken a cab from the airport.
Calder thought it a little odd that Sandy had come all the way to Canada with him, but he was growing to like her company more and more and he didn’t want to put her off by asking her to justify herself. It was clear that a year after the event she was still angry at Jen’s death and wanted to do something about it. She was a determined woman and needed to see justice done as much as Calder did. But did she like being with him as much as he liked being with her? It was impossible to tell. She seemed at the same time both cool and friendly, straightforward and detached.
Calder glanced at her. She gave him an encouraging smile. He rang the doorbell.
It was answered by a small woman wearing a sari. Her skin was dark, almost black. ‘Yes?’
‘Can I speak to your brother?’ Calder asked. The woman frowned in indecision. ‘Tell him it’s Alex Calder. I’m a friend of his.’
‘It’s all right, Sita,’ said a voice from inside the hallway. In a moment Perumal appeared next to his sister. ‘Come in, Zero.’
They followed him into a formal sitting room. It reminded Calder a little of Perumal’s own sitting room in Ealing, but of course it lacked the photographs, the flowers and the incense.
‘You found me, then,’ said Perumal, indicating that Calder and Sandy should sit down. Even though he had been hiding in safety for a month, he looked wary. ‘Does anyone else know about me?’
‘Just us,’ said Calder. ‘This is Sandy Waterhouse. She’s a friend of mine. And a lawyer. Very discreet.’
Perumal smiled at Sandy. Sandy glared back. The look of wariness returned to Perumal. ‘How did you find out?’ he asked Calder.
‘Sandy and I were talking. We thought maybe you’d killed yourself. It would be understandable. We knew you were in deep trouble. It seemed totally out of character to take a couple of days’ holiday to go snowmobiling by yourself. Then I realized that as long as everyone thought you were dead the pressure was off you. You didn’t actually have to be dead. Perhaps the reason the rescuers couldn’t find your body was because it wasn’t there. So we went back to see Nate. He told us how you and he had ridden out to the ravine. He left your snowmobile part way down the slope and started an avalanche with his own machine. Then the two of you rode off on his snowmobile and he drove you up to Canada in his truck.’
‘Just as far as Calgary. I took a bus from there to Vancouver. I still can’t believe we got away with it.’
‘Some other snowmobilers did see you that day, but they thought you were a couple – man and woman. The police were looking for the two of you as witnesses, but weren’t surprised they couldn’t find you.’
‘Nate hasn’t told anyone else, has he?’
‘Not yet.’
‘It’s fair enough he told you, I suppose. I said I’d pay him ten thousand bucks up front and then an extra five thousand every three months if he kept quiet. But he said he’d have to talk if he was ever accused of murdering me.’
‘I’m beginning to see how you got yourself out of all this trouble,’ said Calder. ‘But how did you get yourself into it?’
Perumal sighed and rubbed his face. ‘It all started with that massive Italian trade the Teton Fund did last year.’
‘I thought so,’ said Calder. ‘Was Jen involved?’
‘Oh, yes. Very much so, yes.’
‘Tell me.’
So Perumal told them.
First he explained how Vikram had persuaded him to fake the revaluation of the IGLOO notes with the promise of bigger deals to come. To his great regret, Perumal had gone along with the suggestion. No one had noticed. Perumal was getting plenty of credit and a big bonus for all the business he was doing with the Teton Fund, but he felt very unhappy about it.
Then Jen had resigned and brought the sexual harassment action against Bloomfield Weiss. Perumal had always liked Jen when she had worked with him in the Derivatives Group, and admired her. She wasn’t stupid, and it had been unfair of Carr-Jones to treat her as such. Perumal had hated the way his boss had insulted her, bullied her really, and felt ashamed of himself for not standing up for her. Not that it would have made any difference. So when Jen had suggested going out for a drink with him after she had resigned, he agreed, provided it was somewhere well away from the City.
They had met
in a bar somewhere in South Kensington. Jen had been charming, and they both had quite a lot to drink, much more than Perumal was used to. As Jen explained what had happened to her, Perumal became sympathetic and indignant in equal measure. Then Jen mentioned the IGLOO notes. She had found a copy of the term sheet in the photocopier and had worked out that the Teton Fund must be sitting on a large loss. She laughed and asked whether the Derivatives Group were fudging the reval, or whether they would force the Teton Fund to admit to the loss. She talked about how she had been involved in faking revaluations for clients when she was in the group. He had felt an urge to help her, support her, confide in her. So he told her what he had done.
A couple of days later, Carr-Jones had pulled Perumal to one side. He looked very worried. He said that the Derivatives Group should do no more deals with the Teton Fund. He said he was concerned that someone might check up on how the IGLOO notes had been priced, and asked Perumal if there was a problem with them. Perumal denied that there was, but inside he was panicking. He realized that when he had had that drink with Jen, she had been looking not for sympathy, but dirt. He doubted that she had ever faked a reval herself: she was just fishing. And he had swallowed the bait. He was convinced that Jen had told Carr-Jones that she knew about the mispricing of the IGLOO notes. He assumed she would try to use this knowledge to force Carr-Jones to back down in her legal action. Perumal called her and begged her not to expose him, but she wouldn’t listen. She was determined to make Carr-Jones apologize or suffer or both. So Perumal phoned Vikram and told him he was in danger of being discovered and would have to admit to what he had done.
A few days later Jen was found dead. Perumal didn’t know exactly what had happened to her, but he knew it wasn’t suicide. And he was pretty sure that either Vikram or Carr-Jones was responsible for it.
Italy quit the euro, the Teton Fund redeemed the IGLOO notes for a massive profit, and it was business as usual. Neither Carr-Jones nor Perumal mentioned their earlier conversation about dubious revaluations, nor did they mention Jen. Perumal tried to blank her death from his mind.
A year later along came the JUSTICE notes, and the whole nightmare started again. At first the trade had begun to go the Teton Fund’s way. Then the Japanese banking system had wobbled and everything had gone pear shaped. The Nikkei share index had been hovering just above the knock-in barrier of seven thousand, and volatility was sky high, both of which implied a disastrous price for the JUSTICE notes. In the middle of January Perumal had received the call he had expected from Vikram asking him to arrange a favourable month-end revaluation.
He had refused. He regretted what he had done the year before. It was now clear that the mispricing of the IGLOO notes had been more than just an administrative sleight of hand, soon forgotten. He knew he would be asked to do it again and again. So he said no.
Then he received the anonymous e-mail: Remember Jennifer Tan. The meaning was obvious: the subject line was JUSTICE notes. Unless he went along with Vikram’s request, he would suffer the same fate as Jen. He didn’t know what to do. He considered speaking to Radha, but he was frightened of what her response would be: say no and take the consequences. It was impossible to talk about any of this with Carr-Jones without reopening the whole mess with the IGLOO notes. Besides which he was now highly suspicious of his boss’s role in Jen’s death. When he drove up to Norfolk to discuss his problem with Calder he became nervous that Calder would insist on revealing everything to Bloomfield Weiss and so he left without telling him anything. He became desperate. There seemed no way out, until he’d had the idea of appearing to go along with whatever Vikram wanted and then arranging his own death.
So when he had met Vikram at the Teton Fund’s offices in Jackson Hole he agreed to fake the revaluation. Three days later he disappeared. The disappearance itself had gone surprisingly well; the problem had been his family. There were a few days when Radha hadn’t known what had happened to him. And, even worse, there was his mother. He had known it was essential that his family appear to be genuinely grief stricken right after his ‘fatal accident’ was reported. His sister, Sita, had flown from Vancouver to London to tell Radha the truth in person, and had then flown on to India. After an initial reaction of anger, Radha had forgiven him. She was pleased that he was still alive and glad that he had decided not to continue with the fraud. But his mother was still furious and refused to speak to him. He hadn’t had a chance to get past her to talk to his father.
Calder remembered when he had called Radha from Jackson Hole and she had been so eager to put him off his investigations. He also realized why no one in Jackson Hole seemed to have met Perumal’s sister: she hadn’t even been there.
‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ Calder said. ‘There was someone watching you in Jackson Hole. He probably would have killed you; we think he killed Jen. But he left town. Presumably he was called off when you assured Vikram you would do what he wanted.’
‘That seemed the easiest way of keeping myself out of trouble until I could arrange the avalanche.’
‘Aren’t you missing out something?’ Sandy said coolly.
‘What?’ asked Perumal.
‘About Jen’s murder?’
‘What about Jen’s murder?’
‘You see, we know you fixed it.’ Sandy’s voice was full of contempt.
Perumal looked genuinely shocked. ‘Fixed it? Fixed Jen’s death. How?’
‘We know you got in touch with Mykhailo Bodinchuk and suggested he “take care of” Jen. And then you met the man Bodinchuk had hired to kill her and showed him where she lived.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who’s this Bonchuk man?’
‘Mykhailo Bodinchuk?’ Calder said. ‘Ukrainian businessman? Lead investor in the Teton Fund?’
‘I don’t know any investors in the Teton Fund. Why should I?’
‘The e-mails to Bodinchuk were found on your computer,’ Sandy said.
‘When?’
‘Last week.’
‘Have you got copies?’
‘No. But someone’s, seen it.’
‘Someone? Who?’
Calder raised his hand to prevent Sandy answering. If Perumal was involved with Bodinchuk, he didn’t want to put Nils in danger. ‘Someone reliable,’ he said.
Perumal seemed very agitated. He put his head in his hands. Then he looked up and stared directly at Calder. ‘I know nothing about this. I don’t know who killed Jen, but it certainly wasn’t me. Maybe someone’s trying to frame me. It’s easy to frame a dead man, isn’t it?’
Calder glanced at Sandy, who was still scowling at Perumal. ‘Did Carr-Jones have anything to do with this, do you know?’
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about Carr-Jones,’ Perumal said. ‘He must have known what was going on, but he did a good job of keeping a blind eye. I mean, he could easily blame the fake revaluations on me: all he had to do was not ask difficult questions. But the more I think about it, the more I believe it was Vikram or Martel who arranged for Jen to die, not Carr-Jones.’
Will you tell other people what you’ve just told us?’ asked Calder.
‘And get myself killed?’ said Perumal. He glared at Sandy. ‘Or get myself thrown in jail for a murder I didn’t commit?’
‘If you really didn’t get Jen killed, this will be your chance to prove it,’ Calder said.
Perumal looked at the two of them and waggled his head. An Indian ‘yes’ Calder realized after a moment. ‘All right. I’ll talk.’
‘Thank you,’ said Calder, smiling for the first time. ‘Thank you very much.’
‘You know, everything is over for the Teton Fund on Monday, isn’t it?’ Perumal said.
‘Monday? The last day of the month?’
‘That’s right. The twenty-eighth of February. I copied the model I used to revalue the JUSTICE notes onto a floppy disk. I’ve been tracking the Japanese stock market. And with the Nikkei where it is, the valuation will be low.’
‘How low
?’
‘I estimate it’ll show a loss of about thirty points.’
‘On how much?’
‘Two billion dollars’
‘Jesus. That’s six hundred million!’
‘That’s right. And Bloomfield Weiss lent the Teton Fund the money to buy the notes. So if the collateral value goes down by six hundred million, Bloomfield Weiss will need eighty per cent of that amount to secure their loan.’ Perumal paused to let it sink in. ‘That’s four hundred and eighty million bucks.’
‘And you don’t think the Teton Fund has that much cash available?’
‘I’m sure they don’t. The Nikkei has rallied a little this last week and that will have released some cash, but not five hundred million dollars.’
‘So the Teton Fund’s finished,’ said Sandy.
‘It’s not just that,’ said Perumal. ‘Once people realize Martel’s going down, they’ll be falling over themselves to sell Japanese equities ahead of him. The Teton Fund has a huge position that will have to be unwound. The Nikkei will be trashed. It will be a bloodbath. The brokers will lose serious money. It will spill over into other markets. You could be looking at a full-scale global panic.’
Sandy glanced at Calder doubtfully. ‘Is he making any sense?’
‘Yes,’ said Calder, frowning. ‘He is.’
The cab was still waiting outside, and they asked the driver to take them to an airport hotel. Their flight back to Jackson Hole wasn’t leaving until first thing the following morning.
‘He’s lying,’ said Sandy, sinking into the back seat.
‘Perhaps.’
‘What do you mean, perhaps? Of course he knows who Bodinchuk is, he sent him an e-mail, for God’s sake! He was the one who got Jen killed.’
‘Perhaps he’s right,’ said Calder. ‘Perhaps it was a set-up. Perhaps his e-mails were tampered with.’
‘Oh, yeah. Just on the off-chance that someone might break into his computer and start snooping?’
‘I just can’t believe Perumal would have anything to do with murdering anyone.’
‘He’s a clever man. And devious. Look how he fooled everyone about his accident. And he didn’t even tell his wife.’
On the Edge Page 33