“Thomlinson Sleet, we met at Oxford. March 22nd, 1988. I was a pimply Rhodes scholar, hot off the boat from the U.S. A day I’ll never forget.”
“Of course, of course,” Kitto said, although he had no recollection.
“I didn’t see you, must have walked straight past. Come and have a spot of breakfast,” Sleet said and, without waiting for an answer, turned and headed back towards First Class. Kitto wanted to say no—he wanted to turn and run, tea-less, back to the safety and anonymity of Carriage C. Instead he followed. Sleet had sequestered two facing seats in the Pullman car.
“Jim,” Sleet called over the waiter. “This is Viscount Tremayne—bring him the works, please.”
Kitto saw a moment’s hesitation in Jim’s face—he had been trained to spot an interloper from Second Class—but whatever reservations he had were quickly overcome.
“Sit down, sit down, tell me about the last two decades. Who did you marry in the end? I assume it was the beauteous Anastasia.”
Kitto swallowed hard. “She went to India and never came back.”
“Did she marry a prince?”
“I heard she married a maharaja.”
“You keep in touch?”
“Only through the gossip columns.” Anastasia never responded to his letters but he’d never stopped writing.
Sleet hesitated. “What was it about her brand of beauty that was so bewitching? I suppose it was that Russian blood. And her backstory: weren’t her parents spies, killed in mysterious circumstances?”
“A plane crash,” Kitto said. “When she was eleven.” Nearly twenty years had passed since their last meeting, but his obsession had hardly dimmed with time.
“There are plenty of pretty girls…what was it about her?” Sleet leaned across the table and jabbed his finger at Kitto. “The two of you together were a poster for perfection. You dark and moodily aristocratic, her a perfect golden spirit.”
“It might have looked like that from the outside.” Kitto could only remember his increasingly desperate attempts to persuade Anastasia to love him and his ultimate failure.
Both men fell silent. Sleet tapped the table hard with his fork.
“You don’t remember, do you? That makes it even worse.” He clenched and unclenched his fist and, for a moment, Kitto thought Sleet might strike him.
“I’m sorry—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Sleet shook his head and didn’t answer. Jim brought a full English breakfast. “Tea or coffee?”
“Tea—thank you.”
Sleet speared some blueberries on a fork and dipped them in a pot of yoghurt.
“Aren’t you having a cooked breakfast?” Kitto asked.
“Fuck, no. My trainer would kill me and the wife would run off with him. That’s the problem with being married to a younger woman—you have to keep up with them.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-eight—you’ve heard of her? Calypso Newsome—exVictoria’s Secret. Now Lady Sleet.”
“You’re a knight?”
“Can’t you tell?” He used his fork to imitate a sword and pretended to ennoble his coffee pot, touching it on the right, the left and then on the lid.
“What did you get it for?”
“For services to industry, which as we all know means giving funds to the dear old Tory party.”
“Well done, you.” Kitto raised his cup.
“I’d rather be a viscount or an earl but any amount of money doesn’t buy that now.”
“I’d sell it to you happily,” Kitto said, wondering if his titles were worth anything.
“Who did you marry?”
“Jane Browne.”
“Plain Jane Browne? The dumpy one?” Sleet looked surprised. “Are you still married?”
“We are.”
Sleet looked even more surprised. “You’ve done better than me—I’m on number three. A different mother for each brace.”
“What are you doing in this part of the world?”
“I own an enormous house near Reading. Not as big as yours, but a few more mod cons and a hell of a lot more acres. How’s your farm?”
“Difficult,” Kitto admitted.
“It’s all a question of scale, isn’t it?” Sleet said, as if reading Kitto’s thoughts. “I have fifty thousand acres spread all over the world.”
“Fifty thousand?” Kitto repeated, trying not to spray his host with half-digested eggs.
“Fifty-three thousand four hundred, to be precise. It’s all about IHT for me.”
“IHT?”
“Inheritance tax.” Sleet skewered a few more blueberries. “I can recommend a good tax planner if you want; she’s saved me a fortune.”
Oh, to need a tax planner or have millions to save, Kitto grimaced. He broke the yolk of his egg and used his sausage to mop it up. If he ate enough breakfast, he might skip the lunchtime sandwich. His thoughts turned to his eldest son’s school fees and the oil bill—both unpaid.
“Land is one of the most cost-effective ways of leaving money to the next generation. But farming’s such a bloody awful business that I have diversified by buying in different parts of the world. I have farms in Australia, Europe, America, the West Indies, just about anywhere. I grow all sorts, from hazelnuts to blueberries to corn.”
“Have you been to them all?” Kitto asked.
“Only if there’s an Aman hotel nearby.” Sleet roared with laughter. “In fact I own a few parcels of your old estates.”
“You do?” Kitto didn’t remember selling any of the land to a man named Sleet and supposed it would all have been done via a company.
“Remind me how you made your money in the first place?”
“I’m a prize cunt, otherwise known as an activist.” Sleet laughed at his own joke. “I buy flabby old businesses, break them up, rescue the good bits and flog off the dregs. If I can’t buy something then I look for distressed situations. If there’s money to be made off other people’s messes, I’m the first in.”
Kitto wondered if great success only came to odious individuals.
“What are you up to, apart from farming?” Sleet asked.
Kitto leaned back in his seat and pressed his hands together, wondering how to make his own portfolio of activities sound more impressive. “I’ve diversified over the years. I’ve created housing estates; I’m big in strawberries, given the Spanish a good run for their money; have a few hydroelectric plants, that kind of thing. Recently I became Chairman of Acorn Bank, the oldest institution in the West Country.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Sleet said half-heartedly “It was a building society that turned itself into a bank? Most of its funding comes from the wholesale market.”
Kitto nodded. “We made pre-tax profits last year of £52 million.”
“What’s your AUM?”
Kitto swallowed hard. He found financial terminology confusing. Over the centuries, the City had developed its own language, a patois sprinkled with acronyms and arcane shorthand. At first Kitto had been in awe of those who spoke it fluently, but realised quickly that the highfalutin words and terms were a way to aggrandise simple ideas and confuse outsiders. Though he’d made a huge effort to learn the lexicon, the misunderstanding of one simple term could render a whole conversation meaningless.
“We manage approximately £2 billion.” He hoped that was the right amount.
“Mostly from retail depositors?”
Kitto nodded. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on his neck. Please don’t let him ask any more technical questions, I am only the Chairman, he thought.
“You must have shat your pants after the collapse of Northern Rock?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Your portfolios are similar, lots of CDOs, sub-primes, issues with debt covenants; all the
usual stuff,” Sleet said, helping himself to Kitto’s toast and smothering it with marmalade.
“Obviously,” Kitto said, making a mental note to ask his CEO to translate this jargon.
“Coincidentally, I’ve just bought your sister’s company. On my way there now to shake things up a little.”
“Blaze?” Kitto’s hand froze, leaving his fork loaded with egg and sausage hovering between his plate and mouth.
“Careful,” Sleet said, as a drip of yolk fell on to Kitto’s shirt. “Too late.” Sleet waved at Jim. “Bring him a damp cloth.”
Kitto took the proffered cloth and dabbed furiously at his shirt; he’d only brought one spare to last the week.
Sleet leaned towards Kitto. “What’s the intel on Blaze? She used to have a great reputation. Sharp as a tack. One of the best in the business, but she’s lost her touch. Are there personal issues? Death of a child? Cocaine? I’ve got to think whether to keep her on.”
“What’s she calling wrong?” Kitto asked, wishing he was close enough to his sister to ask her advice.
“She keeps giving interviews saying the markets, particularly the banks, are in deep shit, that we’re in a bubble that’s about to pop.”
Kitto felt even larger beads of sweat prickle on his back and hairline. The yolk had become an insignificant problem; all his worldly goods and a lot of borrowed assets were in a property bond named FG1, which he’d been assured was from a 100 per cent safe income-yielding fund.
“Is there anything in what she says?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level.
Sleet shrugged nonchalantly. “Maybe. I look at every prevailing wind as an opportunity to make money. If there’s a crash, I’ll scalp the schmucks.”
Reaching into his briefcase, Sleet took out a business card embossed with a coronet and his name, Thomlinson Sleet. There were no numbers or email addresses. Kitto looked at it closely. Under the name, in very small letters, he read: “And who the fuck are you?” Sleet bellowed with laughter.
“Genius, no? Wedding present from the third Lady Sleet. Now you see why I married her.” He hesitated. “For you, I’ll do the unthinkable and give you my PA’s number.” He whipped the card away and, turning it over, wrote a mobile number on the back.
“Can I ask you a favour?” Kitto said. “My son Ambrose needs some work experience this summer. Would you have anything? It doesn’t matter how menial.” He could only imagine how furious his eldest would be, having to forgo a summer at home in Cornwall.
Sleet smiled. “I love the idea of having a posh git fetching me tea and coffee. He can start whenever. Call my secretary. She’ll fix it.”
“Thanks.”
Sleet glanced at his watch. “Got to do a bit of work now. See you later. Chin-chin.” He looked down at his papers.
Realising he was being dismissed, Kitto got to his feet. Yolk-stained, humiliated and frightened, he made his way back to his seat. By the time he sat down, the train was trundling through the outskirts of London, past row upon row of red-brick houses. Was his sister correct? Had he, like so many others, bought into a worthless bond? Was it possible that he stood to lose everything? He thought momentarily about cashing in his investments but was reminded that he was Chairman of Acorn Bank, a person of discernment, a man who operated above and beyond tittle-tattle heard on a train to London.
It had been some time since Kitto had thought about Blaze. Occasionally he saw her profile in one of the financial pages and looked with interest at her photograph: where had the wild-haired, farouche woman gone? Was she buried under the highly packaged corporate façade of a sharp suit and lacquered hair? If it wasn’t for her face, he wouldn’t have recognised her. He missed her but knew that Blaze would never take his call. If only she’d tried harder to understand that he had never abandoned her; it was only a bedroom, an old aristocratic tradition. It hadn’t been personal.
The train slowed slightly and the carriage filled with the acrid smell of diesel on brakes. The girl next to him pulled her polo neck over her nose. Kitto wondered whether to change into his one clean shirt in the train or wait until he reached the office. At Paddington, he walked across the park to St. James’s. Although it was only the end of June, the grass had turned bare and yellow, and was littered with leftover picnics, beer bottles and rubbish. A woman tried unsuccessfully to control the greedy impulses of her dog. Two young policemen circled a comatose tramp. As he walked, Kitto thought about Sleet’s prediction. “Most fuckers will lose their shirts, a few will cream it.” Please, dear God, Kitto prayed, don’t let me be one of the fuckers.
4
The Presentation
TUESDAY 1ST JULY 2008
Following her daily 55-minute workout, Blaze walked into Kerkyra Capital at 7:10 a.m. The offices were built around a thirty-floor glass atrium. There were full-sized palm trees, a waterfall and the piped sound of the jungle. When the building had been opened by a minor royal four years earlier, there had been real birds but this had proved unhygienic. Inside the reception area, ten elegantly dressed women sat behind a sixty-foot desk made from carved marble moulded into the shape of galloping horses. “Good morning, Blaze,” the receptionists cried out in unison.
Blaze nodded curtly. At the security barrier, her PA Donna waited with the day’s files, briefing her as the lift shot up to the nineteenth floor where her senior adviser, TiLing Tang, was checking through the morning’s presentation.
“Nothing to report from the Far East,” TiLing said, passing over printouts from the early-morning trades in the Japanese markets.
“How’s Joshua Wolfe doing?” Blaze asked, dreading the answer. Wolfe was the unofficial benchmark against whom she measured her performance. His daring calls, his split-second timing and audacious decisions were legendary. Five years earlier, she and Wolfe had been neck and neck, two great stars watched by all, but in recent times he had steadily and inexorably outperformed her.
“He called it right again. Up another 5 per cent this week.” TiLing, like Blaze, was obsessed by Wolfe and spent many hours checking and cross-checking his investments.
“How?”
“As far as I can tell, by the usual combination of market and stock-specific judgement calls.” TiLing shrugged. Without full access to Wolfe’s portfolio, it was impossible to find out what the maverick investor was up to.
Blaze groaned with irritation, wondering if Wolfe had some kind of insider information. He never seemed to put a foot wrong.
They spent the next couple of hours going over Blaze’s presentation, cross-referencing her notes and arguments. At two minutes to eleven, the receptionist buzzed upstairs to say that most of the clients had arrived. Blaze checked her make-up in a small compact mirror and applied another layer of cover-up over her scar. At 11 a.m. precisely she entered the auditorium, then, looking calm and strikingly beautiful, walked across the stage and smiled at the audience.
She had just begun her presentation when Thomlinson Sleet came into the room.
“Don’t mind me!” he shouted out, and brought her talk to a halt while he spent a few minutes greeting and shaking the hands of many guests. Making his way to the front of the auditorium, he stood directly in front of Blaze and made an announcement. “As most of you know, I just bought Kerkyra Capital, so its £30 billion under management is now part of the Sleet Empire and so are its pretty little slaves.” Looking at Blaze, he winked. She blushed deeply. Her discomfort made him laugh. “Kerkyra has done well, but it’s going to do a hell of a lot better. Year on year this hedge fund has outperformed its rivals, delivering Alpha to its clients. But what is a hedge fund? It doesn’t own anything. Its USP is built on two things—the quality of its employees and its track record. I intend to make it the best. We’ll blow Joshua Wolfe out of the market; the guy’s had a run of good luck but he’s dead meat. Kerkyra is going to be even bigger than BlackRock; I’m going to turn this business i
nto the greatest money-management company in the world.”
His speech was greeted with applause. Sleet raised his hands and, smiling, turned to Blaze.
“Haven’t seen you for a few years. Glad you’ve kept your figure. Guess you’re still riding those horses.” Pleased by his own innuendo, Sleet laughed again, accompanied this time by the mostly male audience. Blaze flushed red from embarrassment. She couldn’t remember meeting the man before.
It took a few minutes to regain her composure and for the room to settle. Standing at the front of the stage, Blaze hoped the microphone couldn’t pick up her clattering heart. Clearing her throat and fixing her features in a smile, she started again.
“The City is full of brilliant people. Many are here today, but have we been too clever? Have we created the means to destroy ourselves?” She had got their attention. “Think of markets as an old-fashioned steam engine needing an endless supply of logs to make it run. Those logs can be made of wood, or stocks and shares, of gold or currency. These instruments are finite, so clever people thought: why not free the markets from antiquated metrics and create something synthetic and endlessly malleable?” Blaze spoke in a low voice, wanting her audience to strain to catch her words, to have to concentrate.
“The most audacious examples of these new creations are CDOs, or Collateralised Debt Obligations. What the hell does that mean? How many here can explain it?” She looked around the room at the many blank faces.
Sleet jumped to his feet. “Stop treating us like schoolchildren; get to the point, if you have one.” A smattering of laughter broke out. Blaze flushed with irritation. Just because the man had bought the company didn’t give him the right to heckle the staff.
“Sir Thomlinson,” she said in a polite but icy tone, “perhaps you’d tell us what a CDO is? Or a sub-prime mortgage, given that you bought several million pounds’ worth only yesterday?” There was a sharp intake of breath from her colleagues, unable to believe that Blaze was challenging their new owner so brazenly and in public.
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