A Long Way Down

by Ken McCoy

  ‘You mean I don’t sound stupid?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean at all. No one thinks you’re stupid. I mean you do sound highly intelligent – even more intelligent than Winnie the genius.’

  Winnie grinned at this, then leaned forward and whispered a few words to Adam, who nodded and said ‘OK. I’ll tell you what I know about Snowball.’

  ‘That’ll do for starters,’ said Sep. ‘A bit of your background wouldn’t go amiss either.’

  ‘My background? Well, first of all, Simeon and I have dual citizenship both here and in the United States, as we were born over there and have English parents – that’s if you can call them parents. They split up when we were children. Not sure if they were even married. Our mom looked after us for a while, then we became too much for her, with Simeon being like he is and apparently I was an awkward child, so she abandoned us. The courts put us into different children’s homes. Simeon went to a home for children with special needs and I went to a normal place. It was harder for Simeon than for me because I was the only person who had ever shown him any affection. I was six and he was four. We didn’t see each other for ten years. Simeon never learned to read or write, so without actually seeing him there was no way I could communicate with him. My life changed when the home I was in got a computer. None of the carers could work it properly but it came with an instruction manual which I read and it all seemed so simple and straightforward that I took to it straight away. It wasn’t a very powerful computer, none of them were back then, but I learned how to upgrade it and convinced the people at the home to buy the necessary hardware to do this with. It got to the point where no one else in the home could use it but me. When I was sixteen this job came up in a computer firm and I was recommended for it by my carers. I got it and suddenly found myself surrounded by massively powerful computers. I was in heaven. After I’d been there a year or so they began giving me very interesting work and paid me quite a lot of money, presumably to keep me there, so I got myself a two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn and went to Simeon’s home and told them I would like to look after him. I was eighteen by then and he was sixteen. There was a lot of stupid red tape to sort out but I managed it and he came home with me to live in my apartment.’

  ‘That was very good for me,’ said Simeon who had been following his brother’s story with intermittent nods of his head.

  ‘Adam, you’re doing really well,’ said Winnie. ‘Could you tell us who looked after Simeon while you were at work?’

  ‘He looked after himself. He can’t read or write, but he can make himself a sandwich and a bowl of cereal. I always cooked him a meal when I got home. I worked at the same firm for years and then I was headhunted by a much bigger company who gave me a massive salary.

  ‘We moved into a proper house with a big yard and I got a woman in to cook and clean for a couple of hours every day – Mrs Hegerty; she was Irish. Looked after us very well, didn’t she, Simeon?’

  Simeon smiled and said, ‘Sunday dinner, Adam.’

  ‘Yeah, she always made us a lovely Sunday dinner. Me and Simeon, we were really happy. I thought he was coming along great. OK, his problem was always there and always will be, but he was enjoying his life with me. Then I was assigned to maintain the New York Stock Exchange computers in their headquarters in New York City. It’s a massive place. There’s a lot of men in suits there who call themselves number crunchers. I was very valuable to them. It was the most important contract our firm had and I was the main person doing it. I spent a whole day of every week there, just checking that everything was working correctly. Eventually I knew their computers inside out.’

  ‘Is that the computer you thought you could beat?’ said Winnie.

  Adam smiled. ‘It’s the computer I did beat. You see, I got friendly with someone there who knew all about the workings of the money markets and stocks and securities and stuff. It all seemed so straightforward to me and I rather fancied doing a bit of dealing myself. I was earning five times as much money as I needed so I had a lot of money in the bank. That’s when the idea came to me.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Sep, who was becoming bored with this life story, although it was essential to know as much as he could about the Piper brothers.

  ‘At your request,’ said Adam, stiffly, ‘I’ve compressed my background story into as few words as possible and I’m trying to make the computer part of the story as simplistic as possible.’

  ‘Your condescending remark has not gone unnoticed,’ said Sep under his breath.

  ‘Try and make it short but interesting, Adam,’ said Winnie, ‘and not too technical. None of us are as clever as you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Adam matter-of-factly, making Winnie smile. ‘Well, as you know, stocks and other securities are traded all over the world by stock exchanges. As the value of shares rise and fall their latest values are sent to stock brokers. In the early days this was done in coffee houses, and then by tickertape and then by other means until nowadays by electronic mail, which is instant and efficient.’

  ‘And secure,’ added Sep.

  ‘Not to someone like me,’ said Adam. ‘You see, brokers get to know the very split-second the share values move. In other words, split-seconds can be made to count when the investor is looking out for upward and downward trends. It occurred to me that if an investor knew five seconds before the broker did about the movement of a share it would put him in a great position to buy or sell within that five seconds. So I needed to create a piece of software that delayed the transmission of shares to the broker’s computers by five seconds and at the same time, send the new share prices to my computer the very instant they moved, that is five seconds before they appeared on the brokers’ electronic quotation boards. I believed five seconds was the optimum time I could afford to delay this transmission without arousing suspicion.’

  ‘On what did you base that?’

  Sep asked the question because he wanted to be part of the interview and not just sit there dumbly listening to a subject he didn’t fully understand. Adam shrugged, now having accepted that Sep could ask him questions.

  ‘Educated guesswork. It could have been ten seconds or a lot more, but there will have been a definite cut-off point where the delay would have been noticed. I didn’t want to go anywhere near that cut-off point.’

  ‘And did you created such a piece of, erm …?’ Sep was stuck for the word.

  ‘Software,’ put in Winnie.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Adam. ‘Not only did I create it, but I installed it very cleverly in the NYSE’s main server, where it is to this day.’

  ‘What? You mean you took the back off the computer and installed it?’

  Adam looked at Sep as if he was an imbecile. ‘I created the programme and put it on to a memory stick which I stuck it into a USB port in a certain computer, after which I removed the memory stick, leaving no evidence of what I’d done. It took about thirty seconds to transfer.’

  ‘Easy as that, eh?’

  ‘Hardly easy. The hard bit is me getting myself into a position to be able to do it. Very few people are allowed access to those computers. I just happened to know exactly which computer the memory stick needed to be plugged into.’

  ‘So it’s not physically noticeable. It’s just hidden somewhere in a computer chip along with millions of other things,’ said Sep.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Almost impossible to find.’

  ‘Very impossible, if you don’t know what you’re looking for.’

  ‘Five seconds doesn’t give you much time to do the trading.’

  ‘True, so what I needed to do then was create an algorithm to pick up the trends, assess them and buy and sell shares for me before the five seconds were up.’

  ‘And you created such an algorithm?’

  ‘I did. It was horribly time-consuming but I needed to get it right. In fact, I’m still tweaking it now and again, as it’s by no means as good as it could be. Assessing the t
rends is the really tricky bit.’

  ‘And is this working for you right now, as we speak?’

  ‘It works quite well,’ said Adam. ‘In fact, it’s taking on average just 2.6 seconds for my algorithm to evaluate the share movements and trade them.’

  ‘Sound like a very clever algorithm,’ said Winnie who now took over the questioning.

  ‘It’s better than clever,’ said Adam. ‘It’s a work of genius and it’s getting better all the time.’

  ‘But you left New York and came over here?’

  ‘Yes we did and getting passports was a problem. In fact, finding our birth certificates was a problem. When you’re abandoned to the state by your parents you almost become a non-person, you know. So I had to become Simeon’s parent.’

  ‘Seems to me that you did really well. Simeon was lucky to have you around,’ said Winnie. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was worried that if I was found out I could be locked up although I’ve no idea if what I’ve done was illegal. I can’t afford to be locked up, if only for Simeon’s sake. I wanted to put some distance between me and the NYSE computers. Also I needed someone who knew about running a business to help me make my system work efficiently. That’s another of my problems – I’m not very efficient, which is why I came to work for Mr Santiago. I knew his name from my NYSE days and he knew about me and my computer expertise, although he didn’t know about my new system until I got here.’

  ‘I imagine he was impressed.’

  ‘Oh yes, but he was also worried about the legality of it so he created the Snowball company, whereby clients would buy and sell shares, using our system and we would take fifty per cent of their profits. It was a way of generating large sums of money which we didn’t have, to trade with and no one could trace the dealing down to us, because we weren’t doing the actual dealing.

  ‘We did a trial run with our first fifty shareholders, who each put a thousand pounds in and we doubled the value of their shares in two days. They each paid us five hundred pounds and they were delighted that they’d made five hundred for themselves. So were we, but we’d made twenty-five thousand using their money. Each of these shareholders was chosen for their ability to invest a million pounds. So, working on our very brief track record we could make fifty million pounds in a very short space of time, of which twenty-five million would be ours. At that point we could and would, have closed down Snowball as we’d have been satisfied with the money we’d made. I was worried that at some point our scam would be discovered so why wait for that point to be reached? We wouldn’t know what to do with billions of dollars.’

  ‘Could you close down remotely the file you installed in the NYSE computer without physically going into the computer?’ asked Winnie.

  ‘Hardly. If I could close it down remotely I’d have been able to install it remotely – and so could anyone. No, it stays where it is. You see, greed is where most criminals and a lot of business people come unstuck, which I believe is what happened to Mr Santiago. He saw himself as a multibillionaire, whereas I wouldn’t know what to do with such wealth. My way would have made us twelve and a half million pounds richer. With that sort of money I could have given Simeon a much better quality of life.’

  ‘And did Santiago split this initial twenty-five grand with you?’

  ‘No he didn’t and that was his first mistake. His second mistake was to believe I couldn’t close down the system that Snowball operated on. Mr Santiago was a greedy man. He offered me ten per cent – £2,500. You see, in his mind the software in the NYSE computer was safe and beyond our reach: our computer was up and running in his office, the money was being paid into a bank account he’d opened in Snowball’s company name and I had no shares in Snowball. His wife was the other director, so he didn’t need me anymore, or so he thought. But he was wrong because I’d learned enough from Mr Feather for us to run the business on our own and I had all the data I needed to close the algorithm programme in Santiago’s computer remotely, any time I wanted and start trading with my own computer.’

  ‘And this is what led to Graham Feather’s death,’ said Winnie.

  ‘I think it was, yes. He was a very nice man was Mr Feather, wasn’t he, Simeon?’

  Vigorous nods from Simeon.

  ‘Very nice indeed.’

  Winnie pressed on before they both got maudlin about Graham Feather. ‘I assume the Snowball computer was in Santiago’s offices before he was killed?’

  ‘It was and that computer is still working properly, but only as a computer. I just wiped any trace of the software from the Snowball system and installed it in my own computer at home, which means Santiago’s Snowball is effectively inoperable.’

  ‘You did that after he was killed?’

  ‘Yes. Right now I just use my own money to trade. With the investors, it was their intention to trade in millions and make quick killings before we shut the whole thing down. On my own I just trade in thousands, which is not a quick killing but nor is it all that noticeable. I work very much under the stock market radar.’

  ‘And how many thousands is that?’

  ‘It’s basically everything I’ve accumulated up to now, after I bought my house and car.’

  ‘How much?’ Winnie asked.

  ‘With your money,’ Adam said, ‘we currently trade with around two hundred thousand pounds, which might seem a lot, but in the world of stocks and shares it’s peanuts. The big guys trade in billions.’

  ‘What do you mean, with Winnie’s money?’ asked Sep.

  Adam was nonplussed, Winnie helped him out. ‘I gave him some of my own money to invest.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A hundred thousand, which I got from the sale of my house.’

  ‘Oh, bloody hell, Winnie! That makes you part of the scam. You’ve just dropped yourself right in it,’ said Sep, ‘and you haven’t got immunity.’

  ‘Let’s see how this pans out,’ said Hawkins. ‘I’m not sure that Winnie has anything to worry about as yet.’

  ‘I estimate,’ said Adam, ‘that if it was still working, since I’ve been talking to you we’d have made about a thousand pounds, which we hadn’t stolen from anyone. It would have been automatically paid into our trading account and used by my algorithm to make us even more money and it would all snowball from here. I was just taking advantage of a vulnerable system.’

  ‘It’s got to be against some law or other,’ said Sep.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Adam. ‘Mr Santiago went into this and couldn’t find any specific law which we’d broken. We weren’t insider trading or anything, we were simply taking advantage of the system.

  ‘You’ve tampered with a very important computer programme to further your own ends,’ said Sep.

  ‘Look, this is all very interesting,’ said Hawkins, impatiently ‘but this is not America, this man has immunity and I want to know how Charles Santiago died.’

  Adam looked to have come to the end of his verbal tether. Winnie looked him and said, ‘Would you like me to tell them, Adam?’

  ‘I think so, yes, please.’

  ‘Is that all right with everyone?’ asked Winnie. ‘I know the story as well as Adam does.’

  ‘Then I wish someone would damn well tell us!’ snapped Hawkins.

  ‘Right,’ said Winnie, ‘Well, when Santiago reneged on his agreement to split the profits down the middle and only gave the boys ten per cent, Adam plucked up the courage to tell him that he could shut the whole thing down any time he wanted and run the thing on his own.’

  ‘In my opinion, Adam and Simeon aren’t entirely blameless in all this,’ said Sep warningly. Winnie looked daggers at him.

  ‘Sep, is it possible for you to shut up for a few minutes?’

  Sep shrugged. ‘Am I right or am I wrong?’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you, Mr Know-it-all!’ she snapped. ‘Santiago got really ratty about it and it all got very violent. He was apparently a real nasty bugger when he didn’t get his own way. He grabbed hol
d of Adam and pushed him to the window which was stuck wide open and five floors up, threatening to throw him out. Adam said he was scared to death that he was going to die, but Simeon went to help and he’s much the stronger of the two lads.’

  She turned to look at both Sep and Hawkins, saying, ‘There’s something we didn’t know about Simeon. Some years ago Adam booked him in for judo lessons to stop him being bullied by idiots. Simeon really took to it and ended up with a brown belt which, I imagine, would be plenty to deal with the likes of Santiago. Anyway, Simeon pulled Santiago off Adam and threatened to push him out of the window.

  ‘This annoyed the hell out of Santiago and he really lost it. He went ballistic and of course Simeon was very upset because Santiago had tried to kill his brother. They had a real ding-dong battle, with Simeon giving better than he got.’

  She paused and looked around the room, from face to face before she said what she had to say next.

  ‘Now Simeon said he didn’t push Santiago out of the window and knowing Simeon as I do, I absolutely, one hundred per cent believe him.’

  ‘Just tell us,’ said Sep impatiently.

  ‘Did you hear what I just said because it’s very important.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK. What happened was that Simeon ducked out of the way when Santiago went at him like a steam train. Santiago stumbled over Simeon’s feet and went clean out of the window like an escaping bird. The window was stuck wide open, as you know.’

  ‘That’s what happened,’ confirmed Adam.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Simeon. ‘It wasn’t my fault, was it, Adam?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘And that’s it, is it?’ stormed Sep. ‘That’s what kicked all this stuff off? A bloody window that was stuck open? A window sticks and nine people die! And we’re supposed to believe this crap?’

  He looked around the room. There was a long silence broken eventually by Sep, whose mind was now more on keeping Winnie safe than solving the Santiago case.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, do tell us,’ said Hawkins.