THERE WAS a postscript.
When the other guests had left, and Two Livers and I were alone, and I was thanking her, because I really do want to do something with Neil and his ideas on sports and media, I poured myself a Scotch from her drinks cabinet and went to the kitchen looking for ice – where I found a bunch of guys in chefs’ outfits packing up cooking utensils.
‘Who are you?’
One of them held his hand out. I’m sure I’ve seen him before. Some kind of TV chef. ‘We were cooking for you this evening.’
What can I say? I laugh. No wonder she looked calm and unflustered. ‘Guys, it was amazing. Great food. Blew me away. Do you do this all the time?’
‘Only for special clients.’
When I go back to the drawing room, she’s changed into a silk robe and she’s curled up on the sofa.
‘I know your secret.’
‘Are you sure?’ She almost purrs the words. I sit beside her and she reaches out to stroke my leg and runs her fingernails up the inside of my thigh. I love it when a woman makes the first move. Especially a move like that. ‘Which one?’
‘The chefs. Just met them in the kitchen. They did a great job.’
She laughs. ‘Oh, that secret. I don’t mind you knowing that secret.’
‘Do you have any others?’
She leans across and, just as our lips meet, she whispers, ‘Thousands. More than you can ever imagine.’
IF YOU know everything about a woman, your relationship with her is already over. On to the next. Or maybe not. Maybe you’ve married her and got kids and the two of you stay together, but the magic is over and the fire’s gone out. But until you reach that stage, there’s always something elusive, something to go for that you haven’t yet grasped.
So I’m sat at my desk twiddling my thumbs, tormenting myself by wondering what secrets Two Livers has that I don’t know about. Men, certainly. She’s known a few, more than a few actually, and I don’t mind that. She’s a woman of the world, a modern-day female predator in a way that used to be reserved exclusively for guys. I like that.
Hmm. Secrets. Women? For sure. At least once with me in a threesome, and it can’t have been the first time. Does that bother me? Quite the opposite. It’s exciting. I wish more women did it.
Drugs? I’m hardly in a position to complain. And she uses far less than I do.
Booze? Of course. But she seems to have an iron constitution. And she works out. She’s in seriously good shape.
So what other secrets could there be? She’s not a gambler, not in a regular sense. She’ll enjoy a night out at the casino, and she’ll take risks at work which would make a lot of people’s hair stand on end. But nothing I have a problem with. Again, I admire what she does.
Significant others lurking in the background? None that I know of, and I had her checked out years ago by an agency.
Maybe she wants to start a family. She may feel the biological clock is ticking, she isn’t getting any younger – all that shit professional women on the career ladder torture themselves with. Only she’s already rich and successful, certainly enough to make whatever choices she wants, including starting a family if she wants to. And, anyway, she’s still in her thirties and has years yet.
Would I want to start a family with her? I already have a daughter I barely know. I feel … indifferent. But I could have children again. Why not? I assume we’d delegate childcare to hired help the way successful people do these days, limiting our involvement to parents’ evenings and nativity plays and stage-managed competitive birthday parties with other parents and, of course, plenty of photo shoots to show how happy and united we are and how much we love each other. So I guess that isn’t a problem.
But what about her fears? Has she been let down by a man? Must have been. We’ve been doing it for millions of years and I don’t see why she should be immune. But, on the other hand, she’s resilient. She’d bounce back, devour or discard the man who had failed her, and move on.
Boredom, or fear of it, seems to be the demon she most has to slay. That’s a common bond between us, not something that’s likely to be a problem. We even started to talk about it at the opera, and I’m happy sharing it with her. I could never be alone with myself. I always need company, diversions, new sources of stimulation. Stand still and you die, or you might as well.
So I’m left cluelessly staring at a blank screen, when Sir Neil Moreland and his team arrive. They sit down in the conference room. Maria makes sure they are happy and then taps on my door to remind me that it’s me they’ve come to see.
This time I’m determined to get on well with Neil. I want us to be on the same team, pointing in the same direction and facing down the same enemies. So I’m polite and smile a lot at the kids he’s brought with him – his commercial director and his creative director, whatever the hell those titles mean. His people are clearly fascinated by my team in the dealing room.
‘Who are those people? What are they doing?’
Happy and the guys are on a conference call, shouting and stomping around. From time to time Happy raises a giant fist and smashes it down on the desk. It’s quite impressive, but gets better when somebody passes Nob a short plank of wood and he puts it between two desks and screams then breaks it in two with his head.
‘Ordering lunch. They’re my traders. They mostly just order lunch. It gets delivered. The big black guy – he’s Happy. You’ll be working a lot with him if we do this.’
‘Happy?’
‘That’s his name. Happy Mboku. You can see he’s happy. You just don’t want to catch him on a bad day. And the tall Japanese guy – he’s Nob. You’ll be working with him too.’
‘Nob? Do we call him Nob?’
‘You can if you want.’
Someone’s passed Nob an empty beer bottle. He picks it up by the neck, shouts something warlike in Japanese and smashes it over his head.
‘Christ.’ Neil seems a bit put off by Nob, who’s waving around the shattered remains of the bottle like an improvised weapon. ‘Are you sure they’re safe?’
‘Totally. At least when they know they have food coming. Although I tend not to go in there myself. Not until they’ve eaten, anyway.’
‘Does he often do that with beer bottles?’
‘Sure. And wine, champagne … pretty much anything. Apparently it’s all down to technique. Anyone can do it.’
Neil’s team shake their heads and I guess that they won’t be asking Nob to teach them.
We go through a longer and much less exciting version of what Neil laid out over dinner. The kids are so serious and well intentioned about the whole thing that I start to get bored. They’ve brought a Powerpoint and it looks like ninety slides. After an hour, we’re only on slide forty. This really won’t do. We’re only talking a few billion and I don’t have all day. I have to take charge before I lose the will to live.
‘Thanks, guys, that was fantastic.’
They look up at me, guppy-like, and then at their boss. They haven’t finished yet, not even halfway through. I know. That’s the point.
‘Neil, let’s cut to the chase. We need to go after a few media companies. TV, radio, print media. Because there are ownership and control restrictions, we mustn’t bid to take them over, just acquire significant minority stakes and then have the kind of conversations that get people’s attention. Make them compliant, shall we say? In parallel, we go for one of the big sports apparel companies, take it over and fold in your retail chain. A lot of investment follows to make both state of the art. We invest in advertising and promoting the brands, and go online in a big way. Then we roll out one new minority sport a month on TV, with high-profile sponsorship, celebs, fanfare, razzmatazz, blah, until we run out of sports. Which will be never. We position ourselves to be best placed in the market to satisfy the demand generated by greater participation – we sell people the shirts, the shorts, the trainers, or whatever it is they need. And we set up a foundation that makes sure we tick the polit
ical boxes with scholarships for talented kids, prizes, social inclusion and all that useful bullshit. Back of an envelope, we’re talking five billion?’
He nods. He looks quite excited.
‘OK, let’s do it.’
The great thing about being unaccountable is that you can do any damned thing you like.
I’M AT Duke’s, sitting at a corner table, while Alessandro pours weapons-grade martinis for Arthur Morgan and me. Arthur’s had the craziest few weeks of his career. After our meeting, he drew up a list of more than a hundred key people in number two or three positions at hedge funds, plus another list of more junior people who looked to be smart and hungry. Then he hired a couple more headhunting firms, this being a labour-intensive business, and started sounding people out, having discreet conversations, drawing up draft offer letters and agreeing numbers.
Then on Monday, a week ago, he hit them all with firm ‘exploding’ offers. Join today and it’s a deal. Hesitate and it’s sayonara. He got seventy per cent acceptances, and a new trading floor I’ve taken just off St James’s Square is filling up nicely.
Word spreads quickly in the hedge fund community. Email, text, Bloomberg and plain old-fashioned phone calls act like jungle drums. ‘Joe is leaving Vampire.’ ‘Mick quit Hercules.’ And so on. After a while, even hedgies worked out that it was a pretty unusual day. Everyone seemed to be moving. Or maybe just leaving. And it wasn’t the ‘names’ that were going. Who’d want them? It was the real people. The ones who did the work and achieved the performance. Dozens of them.
Was it because of all this political stuff in the papers? Surely no one would actually ban short selling? Even politicians couldn’t be that dumb, could they?
And slowly word spread. It was Dave Hart, and he was turning his attention to the hedge fund industry. A dozen lawsuits followed. Predatory hiring practices, incitement to breach contracts, blah, blah. That’s why I have DLR Strummer. For every suit they have a team, and every team is ready to go to war with claims and counter-claims, defending the right of free people to choose their place of employment. Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is the Silver Fox, ready to spread the word, if they cut up rough, that drive-by capital has lost its key people and may no longer be viable – as if he would.
I like causing consternation. I like shaking things up. Now when I walk down St James’s Street on my way to Duke’s, I get angry looks from guys in pin-striped suits with white shirts and open necks. People I’ve never even met don’t like me. Successful, rich, talented people who never had it so good suddenly need to work again. Hands on. Because all the smart young guys have left and the price of talent just went up.
Arthur and I raise our glasses and he proposes a toast.
‘Health, wealth and happiness.’
I shake my head. ‘No. Wealth, health, even more wealth, and then happiness can take care of itself.’
The first sip of a martini is always the best, just as the first kiss is the most enticing. We pause for a moment in silent respect and then get down to business.
‘Arthur, how long ’til you start trading?’
‘Less than a month. An amazing number of the guys are only on a month’s notice with no non-compete language in their contracts. Their bosses didn’t want to have to pay them to keep them offside, so they’re free. We have the systems set up and we’ll tuck in under your regulatory authorisation.’
‘Excellent. I love it when a plan comes together.’ I take a second sip.
‘Are you going to come over to the offices to see things?’
‘No. Not unless I need to. If you have a good man in charge, give him his head.’ It sounds as if I’m a great delegator, doesn’t it? But really I’m just lazy.
‘So, Dave, what are you going to do? What’s next?’
‘I’ve always been a bit of a sportsman, as you know.’ Arthur tries not to choke on his martini. ‘I’m looking at sports and media. I think there are some big opportunities there. But it’s a new world for me. I need to meet the people, check it out, do my homework, you know.’
‘I’m sure you’ll have a great time. Although … media people are different.’
‘Oh, come on, Arthur. They can’t be that different. We’re all built the same way. We all have the same DNA. And I find I can get along with most people if I try hard enough.’
He looks concerned. ‘Don’t be so sure, Dave. You might have to try really, really hard. These guys live in a world apart. Bankers and hedgies might be bad, but media people are bad and dumb at the same time.’
Really? Now I’m intrigued. This could be more interesting than I thought. Better have another martini.
I’VE COME to visit Charles Merton. Charles runs sports coverage at MileHigh TV, one of the biggest satellite broadcasters. MileHigh have the kind of offices in West London that give glitz a bad name – shiny marble and chrome and plate glass on a scale that is meant to be futuristic, but instead strikes me as soulless and insubstantial. There are no reference points in a building like this, no heart. You could change the name at the front and install a sanitaryware manufacturer and no one would be any the wiser. I guess that’s showbiz.
Neil Moreland is with me and he seems nervous. Why? I think the reason is that Merton is both hugely powerful in broadcasting – his decisions on what to cover and when can sink or swim a major sporting event – and has a notoriously massive ego. I tell Neil to relax – we have massive egos too. Everything will be fine.
I’m wrong. There, I said it. I’m not often wrong – I think the last time was back in the nineties – but this time I definitely am.
Merton keeps us waiting in his outer office for half an hour. I don’t mind too much, because he has a stunning eye-candy sex-bomb secretary, who keeps crossing and uncrossing her very long legs in her very short skirt and casting glances in my direction. When we first arrived, she asked if I was the Dave Hart. Normally, if someone asks that I say no, I’m the other one, but instead I gave her a winning smile and nodded. Neil didn’t like that, because he’s very competitive and probably a little immature when it comes to these things, but I made a note to send her a whole van full of flowers and a thank-you note when I got back to the office. I’m not immature at all when it comes to women.
So we sit and watch a giant-screen TV showing non-stop MileHigh News. They have breaking news from Pentonville Prison, where some famous rap star who got banged up on drugs charges tried to hang himself. Apparently he’d been made to share a cell with a lifer from the Russian Mafia who was given a very rare whole life tariff by the judge who sentenced him, because he not only cut his rivals’ heads off but cooked and ate them as well. Once upon a time he was in the illegal diamond trade, but now he spends all day working out in the prison gym and apparently never sleeps. They show his face and he does look very pale, a bit like one of Rom’s undead. I suppose those guys don’t sleep, and you wouldn’t want to share a cell with one of them for very long, would you? I mean, anything could happen. And probably did, any number of times. But why would any prison officer with half a brain put the rapper in with a guy like this? Probably because prison officers make less than thirty grand a year with overtime and they want to enjoy the good things in life, the same as the rest of us.
We can tell Merton is in his office, because other people go in and out from time to time, some of them glancing dismissively in our direction, most ignoring us, and we can hear him talking on the phone, laughing and chatting about his weekend plans and other shit. Apparently he’s going to Dubai and he’s booked a penthouse suite at the Al Khalid Hotel, the tallest hotel in the city, looking out over the Gulf. I hope he has a head for heights.
When he finally summons us, he doesn’t get up from his seat or offer to shake hands, just points to a couple of very low chairs in front of his desk and says, ‘Sit.’
Do I look like a fucking dog? Is he trying to piss us off? Even I don’t behave this badly. Welcome to the world of media. Merton is a kid in his thirties with slicked back hair,
apparently a wunderkind of the TV world, and he’s dressed completely in black. Ugh. Didn’t anyone tell him new media black went out when people stopped talking about new media?
‘So what do you want?’
That’s it? That’s the fucking pleasantries? No ‘Hi, I’m Charles. Sorry I kept you guys waiting, but I’m an arsehole and I do that kind of shit to people I don’t know because I figure that if they don’t already exist within my tiny universe they can’t be very important’? Not even a cup of coffee? Oh, but there is coffee. He has a cup already, and as we sit down he pours himself a refill from a flask on his desk, but doesn’t offer us any. Wanker.
Neil doesn’t blink, just goes into a whole spiel about how the Salvation Fund is looking to invest in MileHigh stock, how we’re aiming to expand sports coverage into minority sports and planning on backing up our interest with a charitable foundation that will support social inclusion and various other important-sounding objectives wrapped up in third-sector speak.
Because he’s nervous, and this obviously matters to him an awful lot, he gets tongue-tied. While the passion is still there, his nervousness shows through and he becomes uncharacteristically inarticulate. In the end he does a poor job – five out of ten? – which pisses me off even more, not because I care how well he does, but because he shouldn’t be intimidated by a wanker like this.
It doesn’t matter. Merton doesn’t even pretend to listen. He plays on his fucking Blackberry the whole way through. It even buzzes at him and he grins as he replies to whichever fucking real person he’s communicating with – as opposed to the two dummies he’s sitting with now.
‘OK, guys, that’s it.’
What? What just happened?
‘Time’s up. Thank you very much for coming. Carole will show you out.’
I don’t get this. Neil has laid out the plan, Merton’s failed to listen or comment and now he’s showing us out? Is that it?
I clear my throat. ‘Mr Merton … thank you for your time. We really appreciated it. I couldn’t help overhearing just now that you’re planning to be in Dubai this weekend. Staying at the Al Khalid. I’ve heard great things about it.’
The Ego's Nest (Dave Hart 5) Page 12