‘I’m going to move in with my mum for the time being,’ said Imogen in answer to Al’s question regarding her immediate plans. ‘Just for a few weeks, maybe a few months. How are things with you, Al?’
It was clear that Imogen didn’t want to talk about herself or her family. This was Al’s cue to make small talk and try and cheer her up. But he couldn’t; he had never felt such a pathological need to tell the truth. ‘Things aren’t great. You don’t want to know. You’ve got enough to deal with at the moment.’
‘No, tell me.’
She had moved closer to him. Al took a sip from his glass of red wine and said: ‘I hate the thought that the next time I see you might be at another funeral.’
‘Yeah, it would be nice to catch up. How’s Felix?’
‘He’s the best. I’d love you to meet him.’
‘I’d love to meet him too.’
Al suddenly felt as though he was working against the clock. More and more people were arriving at the wake. One of them was Miles. He was making his way towards them. Al had to move fast if he was going to say what he wanted to say before he was overheard.
‘I’m going sailing with Felix next weekend. Just around Poole harbour. Krystina’s away. Won’t you come?’
The expression on Imogen’s face just before it changed to a mask of smiling welcome to Miles was one of uncertainty as though she was trying to decode a hidden meaning to what Al was saying. She didn’t have time to respond to Al before she was kissing Miles on the cheek. Al watched them as they exchanged small talk and Miles issued a well judged and pitch perfect tribute to Tobias which Imogen accepted graciously and moved away as she went to welcome some elderly members of her family.
‘It’s a very sad day,’ said Miles. ‘Tobias was one of the good guys.’
‘And what about us, Miles? Are we the good guys too?’
Miles fixed him with a terse smile and said: ‘Who knows?’
After the wake, Al offered to drop Miles at Heathrow. Al had probably drunk more than he should have done if he was going to drive but he felt a need to spend more time with Miles. He would worry about his motives for this some other time. Whether he wanted to torture Miles or whether he wanted to torture himself, it was difficult to say but either way, he felt a sense of mischievousness.
‘Why don’t we forget what we’ve got to do tomorrow and go out on the lash? What do you say?’
‘I can’t,’ said Miles without hesitation. ‘I’ve got a lot to do back home.’
‘Come on, let’s get hammered. We can pay tribute to Tobias Green in our own way.’
‘I can’t.’
Al enjoyed Miles’s discomfort. It was probably something to do with the sheer volume of business that Miles had been putting his way over the past few years but Al couldn’t help but feel that their relationship had changed. They had both assumed the roles of client and supplier. Al enjoyed the thought of levelling the playing field and reverting back to how things used to be.
‘Come on, let’s go out. Why the fuck not? The nanny’s with Felix; Krystina’s away in Europe; I’ve got nothing to do at work tomorrow that can’t wait. Let’s do it.’
As much as Al knew that Miles would turn him down, he was also ready for Miles to surprise him and say yes.
‘I’ve got to go to São Paolo in the morning. I’m on the 9.30am from Zurich. I can’t miss it and I’ve got stuff to do before I go.’
‘Shame. That’s a real shame, Miles.’
Despite the cloud of frustration and unhappiness which Al lived in the shadow of, he still enjoyed a strange feeling of pleasure. Miles had fathered his little boy. It had been a source of enormous pain for him. He loved Felix so much that the thought that Miles might have some sort of control over his relationship with him had been torture. But he couldn’t help but feel that as far as Krystina was concerned, he had made the right trade. And he felt a strange sense of reassurance that by allowing it to happen – or not stopping it at least – he was out-trading the great Miles Ratner.
SP500: 1435
EUR/USD: 1.3705
USD/BRL: 1.9915
Al loved the preparation involved with sailing. He enjoyed attending to the minutiae of yacht management, preparing and setting the sails, checking the back-up engine and the VHF and undertaking all the other myriad rituals that reminded him of his youth working at the shipyard in Poole. But now it took him twice as long as it did before because he had a little helper – Felix – two years old and fascinated in every little detail as only a two year old can be. Krystina had not been happy with the thought of Al taking Felix out to sea but he had assured her that he would be fine – he wouldn’t take his eyes off him all day and would ensure that the life jacket remained on at all times. They would only be making their way east around Brownsea island and back west between Green Island and Furzey Island. It was a journey that he had made numerous times before. The weather was fine; a light south-westerly would have them moving along at a good clip. He had been looking forward to spending the day with Felix – just the two of them – alone on the water. Miles had mentioned to Krystina that he wanted to hand down to his son his love of sailing. She had told him that Felix was far too young to even understand what was going on. But Al knew from his own experiences that sailing was a visceral almost sub-conscious pleasure. You were never too young to feel its allure.
‘Come here little fella,’ said Al, as he attached the rope to the back of Felix’s life jacket and then tied it around his wrist – a safety feature that his own father had employed with him when he was little. As he finished tying the rope, he kissed the boy on the top of the head, relishing the sweet baby-smell of his hair.
‘Need any crew?’
Al turned around and looked up. There on the quayside was Imogen, smiling down at him, silhouetted against the blue sky.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Charming! You did invite me.’
‘You’re right, here, let me ...’
Al reached up and helped Imogen down onto the deck.
‘It’s a lady!’ said Felix pointing at Imogen as she gave Al a kiss on the cheek.
‘Hey fella, you’re right, it is a lady and her name is Imogen.’
Imogen crouched down and held out her hand to Felix who shook it. ‘You must be Felix,’ she said, smiling down at Felix who started giggling and repeating, ‘Imjun, Imjun, Imjun,’ as though it was the punchline of a very funny joke.
‘You’re lucky,’ said Al. ‘I didn’t hear from you so we were just about to set sail.’
‘I thought I’d surprise you,’ she said. ‘Now, just tell me what I’m supposed to do.’
‘I think for starters, you should put on a life jacket – health and safety and all that – then you can sit down next to the wee man here and keep him out of harm’s way while I get us out into open water.’
‘Aye, aye, skip,’ said Imogen. Al could see that she was trying hard to put a smile on her face and her grief for her father was still palpable.
‘Would you mind?’ asked Al as he untied the rope from his wrist and tied it around Imogen’s. She shook her head and smiled at him and as he went to cast off the rope and start the engine, he experienced something that he hadn’t felt for a long time. Not for years. It was a warm glow in his stomach. It was contentment.
A couple of hundred yards out from the quayside, Al cut the engine and set about raising the main sail. He went about his duties like an automaton, allowing his instinct and foreknowledge to guide him while his thoughts were focused elsewhere. Why had Imogen decided to surprise him like this? What did it mean? As he took hold of the tiller and steered the yacht eastwards towards Sandbanks, he looked at Imogen and Felix. They were both pointing at seagulls in the sky and Felix was giggling as Imogen spoke to him. Al was unaware of his own broad smile as he watched them.
Having convinced himself that Imogen was not going to come, lunch consisted of cheese sandwiches, two packets of crisps and cartons of juice.
He had, however, spied a bottle of Cava in a cupboard in the cabin earlier on when he was checking that everything was fastened down properly and he returned from below deck with this and a couple of plastic beakers as Imogen and Felix tucked into the sandwiches.
‘It’s not particularly chilled I’m afraid.’
‘That’s disgraceful,’ said Imogen wearing a playful smile. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’ Al pulled a face at her and she reciprocated.
Having taken down the main sail, Al let the boat drift westwards while they ate their cheese and tomato sandwiches and drank their warm Cava. Felix yawned and Al could see that he was sleepy and in need of his afternoon nap. Scooping him up in his arms, he whispered to Imogen, ‘I’ll be back in a sec; just going to put the little man down for an hour or so,’ and took him down into the cabin where he made up a bed for him wedged between a couple of life jackets so that he wouldn’t fall off the bunk.
‘He’s gorgeous, Al,’ said Imogen when he reappeared from the cabin. ‘You must be very proud.’
‘I am. Sometimes he’s the only reason I get up in the morning.’
‘Things bad at work?’
‘I just hate it. It’s not what I want to do. It’s not what I want to be. I guess it just took longer for me to realise than it did for you.’
‘Why can’t you get out and do something else?’
‘I’m trapped. There’s the mortgage, the nanny’s fees, the overdraft. I can’t just walk away. And besides, what the hell would I do?’
‘Well what would you like to do?’
‘Anything that didn’t involve lying for money. That’s all I think I am sometimes, a professional liar.’
‘The grass isn’t always greener.’
‘I know that but I can’t escape the feeling that I’m on a treadmill and it’s getting faster and faster and I can’t keep up. And it’s that feeling you get when the alarm goes off in the morning and you’d rather do anything in the world than get up and drag your sorry arse off to work to do something that you despise, surrounded by people that if you were in a social situation, you’d avoid like the plague.’
‘Rob and George managed to get out.’
‘It was something they both wanted. That makes it easier.’
Al poured them both another plastic beaker of warm Cava each and clinked his beaker against Imogen’s.
‘Cheers Imo. It’s great to see you. I’m really glad you came.’
‘You didn’t think I would though, did you?’
‘Not really. I worried that I’d sounded desperate at your dad’s funeral.’
‘Desperate for what?’
‘Desperate to see you.’
‘It didn’t come across like that.’
‘I often think about us and what happened.’
‘Me too.’
They both broke eye contact at the same time and took a sip of their Cava, feeling awkward. Sometimes, when Al was trading, he would get a sense of ‘it’s now or never’. In the emotional markets of his own mind, he was experiencing the same feeling. He finished the rest of his glass. Maybe it was Dutch courage. Imogen was smiling at him when he glanced at her and this was all the encouragement that he needed.
‘The thing is Imo, if I’m totally honest with myself, I never stopped loving you.’
He expected to feel a sense of regret at his sudden emotional incontinence but it didn’t come. Instead, he felt unburdened.
Imogen chuckled. ‘It was so stupid the way we ended. Molly dying and mum and dad catching us on the sofa like that. I think I just wanted to punish both of us for what had happened. I don’t know what I wanted.’
Al wasn’t hoping for a reciprocal admission of love from Imogen and he knew that he wouldn’t get one when he saw her mood darken and the smile fade.
‘I don’t know why I ended up with Miles.’
‘You don’t have to explain.’
‘No but I would like to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone outside of my family before. You see, I was pregnant by Miles. I was excited at first, though nervous about all the responsibility. Then I found out that he was having an affair and well, later Al, I had an abortion.’
Al’s immediate reaction was one propelled by his male ego, as he raided his memory to cross reference time lines and reappraise certain key moments in his history in the light of this new information. But when he saw the tears come to Imogen’s eyes, he knew that all that was pointless. It meant nothing. What mattered was now. Al put his arm round her.
‘I’m so sorry, Imogen.’
‘I’ve always regretted what I did.’ She rested her head against his shoulder. ‘Seeing you with Felix makes me think about what might have been. I wouldn’t be with Miles now, I know that. But I can’t stop thinking about my baby.’ Al put his arm around her shoulder.
‘Felix is Miles’s son.’
Imogen flinched and turned to look at him.
‘What are you talking about?’
Now that he had come this far there was no turning back. She might as well know everything. Today was a day of truths. ‘Krystina and Miles had an affair. They’re still having an affair for all I know.’
‘But that doesn’t mean that Felix is Miles’s. Have you had a test?’
‘I don’t need to have a test. You’ve only got to look at him. His mannerisms, his colouring. You look at his eyes. They’re Miles’s eyes.’
‘God, Al, what’s going to happen?’
‘I have no idea. All I know is that he might be Miles’s genetic creation but he’s my son and I love him more than anything in the world.’
‘You’re a good man, Al Denham,’ said Imogen, smiling. She ruffled his hair and then rested her head on his shoulder once more as the waves lapped against the hull of the yacht.
5yr Xover Credit spread: 405bps
VIX: 16.1
AUD/USD: 0.9385
‘I can’t believe how cold and calculating you are, Miles,’ said Krystina as they sat opposite each other in the bar of the Widder Hotel in Zurich. ‘So now I can’t even come to the house? Jesus Christ, Miles, you might not want to be with me any more but I am the mother of your son.’
Miles sipped at his glass of Balvenie Single Barrel. It was Al’s favourite whisky. Somehow that felt appropriate but at that particular moment, it was its resolve-bolstering effects that he was drinking it for more than anything else. Savouring the burn of the liquor, he fixed Krystina with a blank expression and said: ‘I’d like there to be a DNA test.’
‘I mentioned it before. You didn’t say anything then.’
‘I just want to make sure that we all know where we stand.’
‘You bastard.’
‘Once everything is confirmed then we can enter into discussions regarding my obligations, financial and otherwise.’
‘You sound like a fucking lawyer.’
‘Keep your voice down. You know I’ll do the right thing by you and Felix.’
‘Do I? It doesn’t sound like it.’
‘I have so much going on in my life at the moment, Krystina, that I have to deal with this as dispassionately as I can so as to ensure that everything gets done. I’m sorry if that sounds cold. I do want to have access to my son and I do want to be a father to him if you’ll let me.’
‘Miles, there’s going to come a point in your life when you realise that all the money in the world isn’t going to buy you peace of mind. Just because you’ve got a shit load of money in the bank doesn’t alter the fact that you’re a fucking loser.’
She was on her feet and glowering down at him now. She wanted a response to her tirade but he couldn’t be bothered to indulge her expectations.
‘I’m sorry that you feel like that Krystina, I never wanted it to end like this.’
‘You think this is an ending, do you, Miles? This hasn’t even fucking begun.’
She turned and walked out through the bar, drawing stares from other drinkers, most of them men who had been casting gla
nces at her ever since she had first walked in. Miles finished his Balvenie and put the glass back down on the table. It wasn’t like him to be so unprepared for a meeting or to care so little about its outcome but anything outside the mental vortex of his predicament with Aden Partners – even something as emotive as his own son and his role as a father – had faded from his mind.
Miles had quickly come to realise that trying to wind down Roger’s portfolio – that in his own mind he had come to know as the ‘death book’ – was an exercise in futility. The vast amounts of assets were trading at a big discount to par and he was receiving calls to post additional margin from every angle. Miles realised these markets were going to hell in a handcart. Earlier that afternoon, Miles had flown in from São Paolo. The trip was part of Miles’s frantic rearguard action. His only chance to partially cover the losses was to take as much capital as he could find and have an almighty punt on the world collapsing. He had been buying bond calls, dollar calls and puts on equity indices. Miles made sure that the banks he did the business through not only had no relationship with Aden but were strong banks in their own right. Several Brazilian banks fitted this bill perfectly given that he held a lot of his personal money there as well which he had also put aggressively to work shorting the world. It was essential that he had sole control of all the money that he invested. This was his escape money. Since Roger Ellwood’s demise, he knew that he had become expendable. If he put a foot wrong, he too might have an unfortunate accident. The only way that he could survive was if he had the only set of keys to a huge pot of capital that he had secretly invested. This was money he needed to trade the living daylights out of in order to make more money, much more money. Nothing else mattered now. Miles was trading for his life.
30 The Final Trade
SP500: 1275
EUR/USD: 1.496
Brent Crude Oil: 120
There was panic in the air. Throughout August, stocks had continued to collapse. Everywhere Al looked across the industry, there were nervous expressions. People looked to the management for answers as they always had but in reality what they got was misdirection and obfuscation. It was clear that either they didn’t know the answers or if they did, they didn’t want to communicate them. The whole of the City was on edge. That same architectural scenery that invited and implored trust when Al had first started work in the City fifteen years before had lost its reassuring sheen. They were just a load of old buildings, a dusty-windowed façade. And the trust they had engendered had gone. The growing crisis was gradually revealing the true nature of the industry, that it was inhabited by those for whom self-interest was always placed above the common good. And Al was one of them. Whether he would still be one of them for very much longer was something he had considered at length. It felt as though the mood in the City and the global financial markets exactly mirrored his own end-of-the-world feeling.
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