‘Why not? I’m sure you find the details of other people’s sex lives intensely interesting. Or, in my case, inspiring.’
‘Mr Hart, we’re not just talking sex here, consenting or otherwise. We’re talking drugs.’
‘So what? We’re a pharmaceutical society. Alcohol, cocaine, Viagra. Where’ve you been?’
‘Mr Hart, I’m a lawyer …’
‘Exactly. So you must have done all of this yourself many times. Where were you at law school?’
‘Mr Hart – have you been through one of these cases before?’
I nod. ‘Many times. I get about one a week.’ Sam winces as I say this. ‘Normally we pay them off. It’s the firm’s money, so who gives a damn? But this case …’ I look across at Melissa. ‘This is different.’
Hugh slams his hand down on the table. Temper, temper. ‘It’s different, Mr Hart, because finally someone is going to put a stop to you and your antics. This is the twenty-first century, in case you hadn’t noticed. You, sir, have been out of control. We’re going to change that. Not just for the sake of Miss Myers, but for all the other women you’ve wronged over the years.’
All of them? Surely not.
But I can see something’s called for and now it’s my turn to lose my temper. ‘You’re right, Mr Collingwood. This isn’t just about one woman. It’s about all the women in the City. And all the women who should be working here but aren’t. Women like this …’ I stab my finger accusingly towards Melissa. ‘Women like this act like grown-ups half the time, pretending they’re free thinking adults with freedom of choice to decide about every aspect of their lives – including their sex lives – and they expect to be treated as equals. Well, bravo, good for them. I happen to agree with them. This is the City, not the kindergarten, and they should make their own choices, including the choice about whether they sleep with the boss, or the boss’s boss, or the security guard. But then all of a sudden, one fine morning, they decide no, enough of this equality nonsense, I want more than that. I want special treatment. I’m tired of working. I want a pay-off. So I’m going to trade off my sex and take some man, and just for good measure his whole firm, for a ride. I’m going to turn on a sixpence and sue, because I can. The reason they can, Mr Collingwood, is because people like you aid and abet them. And do you know what they achieve? Do you know what you achieve?’
Everyone’s looking at me now, surprised by the unaccustomed passion. I spell the words out very slowly.
‘Fewer opportunities for women. Not just in the City of London. Everywhere. Fewer, Mr Collingwood, not more. There’s always a reason at interview not to hire someone, and let’s face it, with all the legal crap that’s flying around this whole sex discrimination, sexual harassment thing – women are a problem. Who needs them? Why invite trouble? Why bring on board a woman with all the potential legal baggage that goes with her? And it’s not just women. Religious minorities, ethnic minorities, the disabled, gays and lesbians – where does it stop? Who else should we not hire because we’re afraid of spurious lawsuits encouraged by people like you?’
Even Collingwood is pausing now and staring at me. If I didn’t know better I’d say he’s impressed that I care, that I actually think about these things.
‘Which is why at Grossbank we’re hiring fewer and fewer women and minorities. Not more, Mr Collingwood, which is what I’d like to do in order to access the biggest possible talent pool for my firm in this very competitive business. Instead, we’re turning away talent. Deserving talent. And we can ill afford to do that.’
He seems genuinely intrigued now. ‘So are you saying you don’t take so many women on the payroll these days?’
‘Only really cute ones.’
‘What?!’ He almost screams the response.
‘That’s right. Party girls.’
‘Party girls?’
Beside me Sam groans and crumbles. I nod. ‘We only hire girls who are really going to be up for it if I feel like having sex in the afternoon. At Grossbank I have what they used to call droit de seigneur. The other members of the management committee come next, and then the MDs in order of seniority.’
Collingwood’s eyes are out on stalks. He turns to his assistant as if for confirmation that I really did say what he just thought I said. But there’s more. Before he can respond I carry on.
‘Everyone at Grossbank understands the way I work, Mr Collingwood. I always say a woman’s place is on her back. Or her knees. Or occasionally on all fours.’ Now he’s truly gobsmacked. Gotcha.
I smile and shrug my shoulders. ‘Just kidding. Thought it was all getting a little heavy. Needed … lightening up?’
OUTSIDE IN the corridor we’re having a ‘consultation break’. Sam is advising me strongly that if I carry on like this, he will personally have to throw me out the window, which would be a first, even for Wildman, Savage.
‘Mr Hart, please just cool it and let us do our stuff. This case is never going to a tribunal. We’re going to snuff it out.’ He holds up his thumb and forefinger and squeezes them together. I picture some delicate creature – a beautifully coloured butterfly perhaps – being crushed between them and snuffed out of existence. Beside me the psycho lesbian nods her agreement. I manage to smile at her but her expression doesn’t change.
‘OK, seconds out. Let’s go.’
ROUND TWO starts differently. In round one ZCW laid out their stall, producing the usual employment tribunal Exhibit A, a diary full of ‘authentic’ pain and anguish and supposedly real incidents from the alleged victim – seen by most City insiders as a hackneyed, overused device that wouldn’t wash anywhere people had brains, but which still works in employment tribunals. They indicated quite how damaging the publicity would be both for Grossbank and for me personally if we fought the case, and also how time-consuming it would be for management, vast numbers of whom would be called and tied up for days in endless testimony. And at the end we’d lose, because we’re one of the largest financial institutions in the world and she’s a lone woman, and tribunals always side with the victim, because otherwise they wouldn’t have any business. Naturally the other side gave no indication that they would settle, but that was the implication, as long as we played the game.
Now it’s our turn, and for once I’m going to stay quiet while my legal attack dogs do the dirty work.
Sam puts on his reading glasses and purses his lips. He’s got a black leather file on the table in front of him, and now, with a true showman’s sense of theatre, he opens it. He casts an eye down over the page, shakes his head silently, closes the file and takes his glasses off. He looks across at Hugh and casts a reluctant sideways glance at Melissa.
‘I … I’m not sure we want to go here. Any of us.’ Across the table, they’re waiting silently, listening to the sound of the clock ticking on the wall behind them.
Finally Collingwood loses patience. ‘What have you got?’
Sam shrugs as if he’s only going along with this because Collingwood has insisted, slips his reading glasses on and opens the file again. ‘Not a hell of a lot, I have to say. And obviously a lot of it’s a long time ago, and hardly relevant to the case at hand.’ He smiles reassuringly at Melissa, putting on his best bedside manner. And then his expression changes. ‘But it’s enough. And it would come out. It’s inevitable in situations like this, no matter how well intentioned we are.’
Melissa was probably briefed that this would happen, that it would be a tactic on our side and she should tough it out, but still she isn’t quite ready to watch Sam Goodwin turn into a vampire.
‘We’ve got a whole bunch of kid’s stuff: shoplifting, minor drugs, cheating at exams, sexual promiscuity from an early age – certainly before the age of consent – a teen pregnancy that seems to have gone away, but hard-working parents who did their best and got their only daughter into university. Ordinary, honest, hard-working people. Good people. They’re both still alive.’ He looks across at Melissa. ‘They must be very proud of you.’
She nods, but her eyes are misted up and I can see she wants to kill him.
‘It’s the more recent things that have greater relevance as indicators of character and temperament.’ He makes a show of flicking through the pages of the file in front of him. ‘You certainly get around, don’t you, Miss Myers?’
‘Mr Goodwin!’ Hugh Collingwood is doing his chivalrous thing. About time. I might even have thought about doing it myself if Sam had been left to go on the way he was. ‘Mr Goodwin, if you are seeking to threaten my client or otherwise pressurise her by alluding to some possible media smear campaign, let me make it absolutely clear that we will be out of here in less time than it takes to say “Fuck You” and we will see you in the tribunal, sir.’
Sam holds up his hands. ‘I entirely agree. And we certainly don’t want to spend time today on Miss Myers’ ex-lovers, her partying, her dabbling with drugs, the overstated grades on the CV she used to get her job here, her lack of references from her last employer, her own harassment of two junior male employees at this firm, both of whom stand ready to give evidence against her, or anything else for that matter. It can all come out in the fullness of time, insofar as it’s relevant to the case. And what isn’t relevant can be judged by … well, whoever gets to hear about it all. Over and over again. Every time it gets repeated in the press.’ He turns to Melissa. ‘Your parents must be very proud of you, Miss Myers. It would be awful if your departure from Grossbank were to become one of those tedious, sordid affairs that everyone reads about in the newspapers. For weeks on end. Weeks and even months, depending how long it all takes. And then of course it all gets preserved for posterity on the internet. Anyone who ever wants to check out Melissa Myers just sticks your name into Google and, hey presto, there it all is, for the rest of your life. A stain that never gets washed away. I don’t think any of us wants to see that. It doesn’t have to go that route, honestly. And it might be better for all of us if it didn’t.’
Wow. Is he evil or what? I’ve often thought of myself as pretty bad, but I regard myself as too shallow to be truly evil. Sam, on the other hand, looks as if he positively gets off on this stuff. How awesome it must be to work as an employment lawyer – greedy, grubby liars, cheats, chancers and con artists on the one side and evil corporations on the other. Who cares who wins? You just want everyone to lose, as long as it’s bloody, which of course it generally is. It’s no wonder he looks like a vampire. I bet it’s where all the vampires work.
I’M TAKING Sam Goodwin out for a celebratory drink. In return for a watertight confidentiality undertaking and signing all kinds of waivers, Melissa agreed to settle for nine million, which meant Collingwood was happy, because he keeps thirty per cent and it sets a new record in the London market. Melissa was happy, because it’s more money than she could have earned in ten years, even with special grace and favour from me which, ten years from now, being ten years older and therefore less attractive, she would certainly not have been getting. Sam is happy, because I’ve insisted Grossbank overpays his already outrageous bill by twenty-five per cent by way of a bonus, and even Charles Butler is happy, because I’ve used my powers of patronage to award him a special interim enhanced performance-related bonus – a hundred thousand pounds in plain man’s language, which is a lot of money for someone like that. And I’m taking him and his best people from HR to Mauritius, although they’ll be staying separately from the rest of us.
Truly money is the greatest lubricant of all. Just look how much happiness it’s allowed me to spread around in a single day. And of course I’m happy because I have one less headache, which means I’m going to celebrate by giving myself another.
If it all seems futile and wasteful, that’s because it is, but I find alcohol helps to numb the pain. Tom is taking us to Jack’s Place, a trendy bar just off Berkeley Square, where we’re going to meet two of my favourite escorts: Ilyana, a stunning blonde from Kiev, and Lucia, a raven-haired Columbian. Sam can choose whichever one he wants and I’ll even stand aside and let him have both if he’s really keen to indulge. Tonight he’s royalty, tomorrow I’ll have forgotten him, at least until I get into trouble again.
Investment bankers are divided on the subject of escorts. On the one hand there are those who apply the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule – they never see the same girl more than three times. This is because escorts are beautiful, sexy, accommodating, laugh at all your jokes, make you feel good and know the kind of tricks in the bedroom that your wife probably forgot – if she ever knew them – a couple of children ago. You have such a good time that if you keep seeing the same girl you’ll fall in love with her, and that would be ridiculous. What would all her other clients do? As a result, most investment bankers fall into this category, using the girls they meet on their travels round the world like Kleenex – pay, use once, or at most twice, dispose.
The other school of thought, which I belong to, is that you need to see the same girl more than three times because that way you get to know each other properly and will get the most out of her. I like this approach, and make it my business to get to know as many beautiful, exotic creatures from all over the world as well as I possibly can. Truly I am the greatest of all romantics.
All that being said, whatever school of thought you belong to, you pay and they collect. The really great girls, like Ilyana and Lucia, are very expensive, but it’s still not as expensive as getting married. What’s a couple of grand a head compared to half of everything you own and a meal ticket for life?
Like I said, I’m a romantic.
IT’S DAY one of the global banking off-site in Mauritius and I’m having a ball. I feel as if I’ve died and woken up in corporate yes-man’s-land. Everywhere I turn people are smiling at me. You’d think I was the cleverest, funniest, wisest, wittiest man on the planet. But do I actually like it? Hell yes, I love it. I’m surrounded by world-class bullshitters, and they’re very convincing. I’ve heard it said that on occasions like this, away from the office, some bosses just like to be treated like ordinary human beings; others like to be treated like gods. I’m one of the latter.
We’re staying at the Planters Bay Resort, a super-luxury five-star beach and spa holiday destination with all possible amenities. My popularity has been restored by a last-minute announcement citing cost-cutting pressures for not taking wives and girlfriends, so everyone is looking forward to having a good time. In fact most people are looking forward to having a totally excessive time.
I would too, except for one thing, which I simply don’t understand. Two Livers and Paul Ryan didn’t come. Not only were they meant to host some of the sessions and address the troops, but they were meant to flank me when I gave my keynote address, showing solidarity and support as in the past. They’re both citing plausible-sounding business excuses – major corporate clients going bust because of the financial crisis – but I know and they know and they know that I know that no one in their right mind misses out on five days in Mauritius with all the movers and shakers in the firm. Who cares if business and industry are crumbling, as long as we’re having a good time? Unless of course they want a free hand to do whatever it is they’re planning while everyone else is away.
Could I fire them if I had to? Of course. Even Two Livers now, after what’s happened. I’d fire anyone if I had to. But I also need to be practical. Those two actually do most of the work and know all the key people and generally, well, lead the firm. Most of the time I’m freed up to do strategy and big-picture thinking – thirty thousand feet and upwards, which is where I excel. Well, I think I do. I certainly don’t excel at the other stuff.
The people I’ve gathered for the off-site represent all shades and types of investment banker. There are suave, sophisticated Eurotrash coverage officers, all of them fit, sleek, tanned, expert golf and tennis players, fluent in six languages, with a full set of social skills. On the other hand there are nerdy geeks with monster-sized brains but no social skills at all, who run quantitative portfolios on t
he proprietary trading desk, and whose idea of fun is to go online and play World of Warcraft non-stop for twenty four-hours, barely pausing to drink their Coke and eat their pizza.
In order to help bring everyone together and foster a sense of common identity, the corporate events team have given everyone colour-coded flowery Hawaiian-style shirts with the Grossbank logo on the pocket, a different one for each day.
On day one, a blue-shirt day, I turn up wearing a red one. This causes immediate consternation. I introduce the sessions we’re going to be having, explain the serious stuff and the fun stuff, and they disappear into their break-out groups, without anyone having dared tell me what a jerk I am for not even being able to read the instructions saying what shirt I should wear.
When we reassemble for the morning coffee break, a couple of entire groups have changed into … red shirts! So have a sprinkling of individual members of other groups. An interesting crowd dynamic starts between the blues and the reds. Was it right to change to a red shirt to show common cause with me? Or simply to stop me feeling like a jerk? Or does it show a sycophantic approach to the boss, which he’ll see through the same way everyone else does, and which will backfire because he’ll despise the brown-noses?
Dave Hart Omnibus II Page 12