On the Edge

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘So.’ Stahl stared hard at Calder. ‘I want you to come back.’

  Calder couldn’t believe what he had just heard. He glanced at Stahl: he was serious. ‘No,’ he replied simply.

  Stahl leaned back, studying Calder. ‘With most guys I’d be trying to work out how much to pay you. But that’s not gonna work with you, is it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Come on, Zero. You miss it. The excitement of the markets moving up and down. The thrill of running a billion-dollar position. I’ve watched you. You’re a risk taker. If you stay at that airfield of yours you’ll either kill yourself or die of boredom. Am I right? Say I’m wrong.’

  Calder looked at Stahl. He was right. Stahl was bloody well right. But Calder couldn’t admit that to him, or even to himself.

  He remembered Jen sitting in the same spot where Stahl now was, saying that for the first time she was happy with her life in London. A minute later that had all changed.

  He had to get out Now. He stood up, leaving his half-finished beer on the table. ‘Sorry, Sidney, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Stay a few minutes. Finish your drink.’

  ‘No, Sidney. No. I have to go now.’

  Stahl sighed. ‘All right, then,’ he said, standing up and shaking Calder’s hand. ‘But, Zero?’ Stahl smiled the confident smile of someone who always gets what he wants.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I know where to find you.’

  Author’s Note

  None of the characters in this book is based on a real person; any resemblance to a real person is coincidental. All the companies mentioned are fictional. The Teton Fund does not represent a real hedge-fund in Wyoming, or anywhere else for that matter.

  A great many people need to be thanked for giving so generously of their time, among them Eric Wilson, Tony Main, Simon Davis, Stephen Dyer, Jon Graesser, Brian Lacey, Paul McNulty, Mark Aitken, Allan Walker, Toby Wyles, Kevin Whyman, David Craggs, Shantanu Bhagwat, Michael Mabbutt, Saheed Awan of Clearstream, Emily Rixinger, Jock Paton, Agnès de Petigny, Anne Lumsden of Charles Russell, Haim Merkado and Stuart Reeves at Panshanger Aerodrome, Monica Steidele, Judy Singleton, “Skinner”, Dale Donovan of the RAF’s corporate communications section and the unnamed Tornado aircrew at No. 1 Headquarters in RAF High Wycombe. If there are any factual errors in this book, they are mine. As always, I would like to thank my editor, Beverley Cousins, and my agent, Carole Blake, for all their help and support.

  If you enjoyed ON THE EDGE, look out for the second Alex Calder thriller

  SEE NO EVIL

  by Michael Ridpath

  (Michael Joseph £12.99)

  When an old college friend pays Alex Calder an unexpected visit he is drawn once more into the City’s shady underbelly.

  For Kim is married to Todd, son of South African newspaper tycoon Cornelius van Zyl. Todd wants Alex’s help to investigate the murder of his mother eighteen years ago. It was assumed Martha was killed by guerrillas – but the recent discovery of a letter sent shortly before her death now suggests a crime far closer to home.

  When an attempt on his life puts Todd in a coma, Alex vows to uncover the truth.

  Then a sudden blast shatters his world …

  Read on for a taster…

  It was quiet at Langthorpe Aerodrome. There was no roar of aircraft engines running up twenty yards outside the flying school, nor whine of those same engines in the circuit a thousand feet above. The only sound was the gentle plink of recently deposited rain water as it fell in fat irregular drops from the gutters and trees. The air was damp, cold and still. The lurid orange windsock hung limp by the fire truck. A grey mass of cloud, scarcely able to hold its many tons of tiny water droplets, pressed its great weight down on to the runway and the line of poplars on the far side. The sea, seven miles to the north, was invisible. So too was the round church tower of the village of Langthorpe, barely half a mile distant.

  Alex Calder peered vainly at the cloud for any sign of sun. According to the weather forecast the slow-moving cold front was supposed to clear at any moment, leaving behind the newly washed brilliant blue skies and tufts of cloud through which it was such a joy to fly. But that wasn’t going to happen, at least not for the next couple of hours, so Calder sent home the student who had been hovering around the reception area hoping that part of his scheduled lesson on ‘recovery from unusual attitudes’ could be salvaged.

  There was a pile of recent ‘Notices to Airmen’ from the Civil Aviation Authority to be gone through, but Calder couldn’t resist bringing up the Spreadfinex page on his computer. Numbers flashed up blue and red, familiar numbers, representing the bond markets of the United States, Britain, Japan and the euro zone. There was a time when Calder had been immersed in these numbers ten hours a day, buying and selling millions of dollars of bonds on behalf of his employer, Bloomfield Weiss, a large American investment bank. But two years previously he had quit that world in disgust and together with a partner had bought the aerodrome and its attached flying school. He still missed it: the thrill of pitting his wits against the market, of watching those winking figures as they indicated losses transformed to profit. Throwing his little red Pitts Special aerobatic biplane around the sky went some distance towards slaking his thirst for risk, but not far enough. So in the last few months he had begun to bet on the direction of the bond markets, using an internet spread-betting service. It was almost like the real thing, except he no longer had an edge over the market, he knew he was more likely to lose than to win and the sums he was playing with were thousands of pounds of his own money rather than millions of dollars of someone else’s.

  That morning he was down fifteen hundred quid on a bet he had made that US bond prices would rise. They hadn’t. Yet. He was confident that they would. Perhaps he should bet a little more?

  He glanced up as he heard rapid footsteps along the path outside his window. A man and a woman strolled by. The man was young, tall and confident. And the woman …

  Calder grinned and leaped to his feet. He met them as they entered the reception area. When the woman saw Calder her face lit up and she unhooked her arm from her companion’s and embraced him.

  ‘Kim, I can’t believe it,’ Calder said. ‘I haven’t seen you for–’

  ‘Ten years,’ the woman said.

  Calder looked at her. She had changed very little. Kim O’Connell’s Irish ancestry had always been obvious, with her white skin, jet-black hair and grey eyes. The hair was cut shorter and the unruly curls had been tamed, faint lines etched the edges of her mouth and eyes, but the smile was there, that warm, generous, flirtatious smile that she bestowed on everyone and anyone.

  ‘You’re staring,’ she said. ‘Do I pass?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Calder said. ‘It was just so unexpected. But it’s good to see you!’

  ‘This is my husband, Todd.’

  ‘Hi, Alex, how are you?’ The man thrust out a hand and shook Calder’s firmly. He was a couple of inches taller than Calder, with a square jaw, blond hair brushed back from his forehead and bright blue eyes. He was dressed in a turtle-neck, chinos and an expensive suede jacket. Handsome. Definitely handsome. But Calder would have expected nothing less from Kim.

  ‘I’d heard you got married,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you had. We invited you to the wedding!’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry I couldn’t come. I think I was working in New York at the time.’

  ‘The wedding was in Philadelphia! Pathetic, Alex.’

  Calder smiled and shrugged. Well, I’m sorry I missed it.’

  ‘What about you? Is there a girlfriend? A wife? Little flying Calders?’

  Calder tried not to wince as he thought about Sandy. The row that they had had on the phone following his disastrous trip to New York to see her was still raw. ‘No,’ he said flatly.

  Kim’s eyes narrowed. Calder could see her curiosity was piqued, but she decided not to pursue it.

  ‘Look, are you hun
gry?’ he said. ‘It’s just about lunch-time and there’s a nice pub in the village I live in. It’s not far.’ He glanced at the sky; if anything it was pressing lower on the airfield. ‘Not much is going to happen here for a while.’

  There wasn’t room for them all to fit into Calder’s Maserati so they hopped into Todd and Kim’s hired car and Calder directed them through the village of Langthorpe and north towards the sea and Hanham Staithe. Kim rattled on about their drive to Norfolk from her parents’ house in Liverpool. He had forgotten how much she talked, but he noticed that the Liverpudlian tinge to her accent he remembered from university had been replaced with a hint of American.

  Ten minutes later they were all installed in the Admiral Nelson, an ancient white stone pub, mostly empty on a weekday lunchtime. It overlooked the pot-holed hard, newly inundated with rainwater from above and seawater from below. A variety of vessels, sailing dinghies, small fishing boats and even a couple of thirty-foot yachts strained against their moorings in the creek as they were thrust upstream by the flooding tide. The marsh beyond brooded under the dark clouds. Calder ordered drinks at the bar, a pint of local bitter for Todd, a half of cider for Kim and a ginger beer for himself: there was still a possibility he might be able to fly that afternoon.

  Of course he knew Kim had got married. And whom she had married, even if he hadn’t recalled her husband’s first name. Todd was the son of Cornelius van Zyl, a newspaper tycoon originally from South Africa who owned the Herald, a British mid-market tabloid, and other newspapers in America and elsewhere. The wedding had caused a stir among the group of friends from Cambridge which Calder kept up with, and although some of them had seen Kim since then, Calder hadn’t. Which was a shame. They had been good friends at university, sharing an overcrowded student house in the Kite in their second year.

  ‘So what brings you to Norfolk?’ Calder asked as he returned to their table with the drinks.

  ‘We were over in England visiting with Kim’s folks,’ Todd said, ‘and we figured we would drop in and see you on the way back down to London.’ His accent was odd, almost standard English, but with traces of American and South African. Of course Norfolk was nowhere near a straight line from Liverpool to London, but no doubt Calder would find out what they wanted later.

  ‘So you left the City?’ Kim asked. ‘Last time I saw you you’d just joined Bloomfield Weiss.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Calder. ‘I stuck it out until a couple of years ago. I enjoyed the bond trading, and I was pretty good at it too, but the office politics got a bit much for me.’

  ‘We read about that business with the hedge fund,’ Todd said. ‘Kim got all excited that she knew you. It sounded like quite a mess.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘And now you’re running this flying school?’ Kim said.

  ‘With my business partner, Jerry. It’s going quite well, we’re building up a nice reputation. But it’s a struggle just to break even.’

  ‘You’ve got some nice airplanes there,’ Todd said. ‘What was that big single-engined plane with the red star on the side?’

  ‘Oh, that. It’s a Yak. A Yak-11, made in 1956. The insignia is from the old Russian air force. It’s great to fly.’

  ‘Looks cool.’

  ‘I’d take you up if the weather wasn’t so bad.’

  Todd’s interest perked up. Kim frowned. Calder was amused to see Kim cast in the role of worried wife.

  ‘What about you?’ he said to her. ‘You were off to Harvard to do an MBA.’

  ‘That’s where I met Todd. Then I worked for a management consultancy in Philadelphia. I usually don’t admit it but I rather enjoyed myself. Lots of telling people what to do and then waltzing off before you see the damage you’ve caused. But now we live in a little town in New Hampshire. Todd teaches English at a boys’ school there. And I work in the local hospital administering things.’

  There was the tiniest tinge of resentment as Kim said this. Not enough to be rude or disloyal, but just enough for Calder to pick up. And for Todd, of course, who stiffened slightly.

  ‘We decided to get out of the race,’ Todd said. ‘I was working for my father–’

  ‘Todd just couldn’t stand it,’ Kim interrupted. ‘He realized the newspaper business just wasn’t what he wanted to do. Somerford is a beautiful little town and we love it there.’

  Calder couldn’t quite see Kim getting out of the rat race. She was more the type to elbow herself to the front She glanced at him quickly, seemed to read his thoughts, then moved a hand on to her husband’s as if to reaffirm her loyalty. It was funny how he could still tell what she was thinking all these years later.

  Calder picked up the menu. ‘Shall we order something? The fish here is usually delicious. It’s all caught locally.’

  They ordered, then Calder leaned back in his chair. ‘So, what’s up?’

  Kim and Todd exchanged glances. ‘Actually, we wondered if you could help us with something,’ she began.

  ‘I hope so,’ Calder smiled.

  ‘It’s to do with Bloomfield Weiss.’

  Calder’s smile disappeared.

  Kim noticed, but ploughed on. ‘You probably remember who Todd’s father is?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Calder admitted.

  ‘Right. Well, Todd’s mother, Martha, was American. They lived in South Africa, near Cape Town. When Todd was about sixteen she was killed in a game reserve near the Kruger Park in the north of the country. The authorities said she was murdered by guerrillas but Todd has never believed that, have you, darling?’ Kim touched her husband’s sleeve.

  ‘How long ago was this?’ Calder asked.

  ‘In 1988,’ Todd said. ‘When South Africa was still under apartheid rule.’ He hesitated, glanced at Calder, and then went on. ‘I was at boarding school in England at the time. My mom and dad were going through a difficult patch, the worst I’d seen by a long way. Things had been really tense the last time I was home and that was the main reason I arranged to spend part of that summer holiday staying with a friend in England. Mom was unhappy about that.

  ‘The fights got worse and Mom decided to go off by herself to a private game farm near the Kruger Park for the weekend. It’s a bit of a mystery why she chose that particular reserve; it was a place called Kupugani and she’d never been there before.’

  Todd swallowed. Kim’s hand tightened on her husband’s arm. Todd was staring into his beer, seemingly unaware of her or Calder. ‘I pestered my father until he told me what happened. They put her up in a cottage a few hundred yards away from the main camp. It was the morning, she was alone in bed and the other guests had gone off on the morning game drive.’ He swallowed again.

  ‘You don’t have to tell Alex if you don’t want to,’ Kim said.

  ‘No that’s OK, unless you don’t want to hear it.’ Todd glanced up at Calder. Calder could tell he wanted to talk.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The cottage was next to a dried-out river bed. Apparently, guerrillas used to come through the area after entering South Africa from Mozambique. If they were picked up they would claim they were refugees. The police said a group of them passed through Kupugani that day. They saw the cottage and Mom inside, and one of them fired through the window from the far side of the river bed. Mom was hit by three rounds in the chest. She was killed instantly.’ His voice quivered and he paused to compose himself. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a long time ago and you’d think I was over it by now, but I don’t see why anyone would want to do that to my mother. She was a wonderful woman. She believed in the struggle, in the abolition of apartheid; she always said that was one of the main reasons she married Dad and moved to South Africa.’

  ‘But you don’t think the guerrillas shot her?’

  ‘No,’ Todd said. ‘It’s too convenient. It wasn’t just a random killing.’

  ‘Martha knew someone was going to kill her.’

  About the Author

  Before becoming a writer, Michael Ridpath used to work in the City o
f London as a bond trader. He has written eight thrillers set in the worlds of business and finance. Michael is currently writing the internationally bestselling Icelandic based Fire and Ice series. He was brought up in Yorkshire, but now lives in North London. His website is at www.michaelridpath.com