Free to Trade

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘Then suddenly last week, I got called into a meeting with the head of the London office. He told me that evidence had been found that Joe Finlay had been buying large amounts of Gypsum of America stock for his personal account, based on inside information. He had also built up a sizeable position in the bonds for Bloomfield Weiss, but the authorities were now convinced that no one else in the firm was involved. I can’t tell you how relieved I was.’

  Cathy listened with interest to this, her brows knitted in concentration. ‘What I can’t understand,’ she said, ‘is why Paul isn’t in the clear. If the TSA think Cash had nothing to do with it, then unless they think that Joe and Paul were in regular contact it should prove that there was no channel for Paul to get the information.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said.

  Cash nodded. ‘She is right. You should see someone about it. Either De Jong or the TSA. I’ll back you up.’

  I smiled, ‘Thanks, Cash.’ And I was thankful. Having escaped unharmed, there was probably nothing Cash would rather do less than reopen the whole question. It was good of him to offer to do so. ‘I’ll phone the TSA in the morning.’

  I sipped my beer. ‘I wonder if Joe knew Debbie was on to him?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Cash.

  ‘Well, Debbie tipped Bowen at Bloomfield Weiss off that something funny was going on. If Joe found out about it he would have been quite upset.’

  ‘You mean he might have killed her?’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Jesus, maybe he did,’ Cash said. ‘But I am not so sure that Joe was acting completely alone in all of this.’

  ‘Why is that?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, he had to get the information from somewhere. I mean a German company taking over an American target. How would a bond trader in London hear about that?’

  ‘Careless talk?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  I thought for a second. ‘What about Irwin Piper? He specialises in just that sort of thing, doesn’t he? Did Joe know him?’

  ‘I was just thinking along those lines,’ said Cash. ‘Yes, he did. I’m not sure how they met, but somehow or other they had gotten to know each other pretty well.’

  I rubbed my chin and thought about it some more. ‘It is possible. But how can we find out?’

  ‘We may be able to work out something from his trading tickets!’ said Cathy. ‘They should still be around somewhere. I’ll have a look tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I am glad we are getting somewhere,’ said Cathy. ‘Now there is something else we wanted to talk to you about, Cash.’

  I looked sharply at Cathy. I was prepared to believe Cash had nothing to do with the Gypsum insider trading, but that did not mean I trusted him on everything else.

  ‘Paul, I think we should tell him,’ she said. ‘Trust me.’

  I hesitated. I was tempted to accept Cathy’s plea to trust her. I found it difficult myself to believe that Cash was the brains behind the Tremont operation. What the hell, I thought. Why not confront him with it? I had been dodging around for weeks trying to get answers from people without alerting them. I was getting impatient. I wanted to know. Now.

  ‘OK,’ I nodded my head. ‘Let me get you another drink, Cash. You’ll need it with what I am about to tell you.’

  So I bought Cash another drink, and told him more or less everything that had happened from Debbie’s death on. It was the first time I had ever seen Cash at a loss for words. His jaw literally dropped as I went through my story. When I finished it, I looked him straight in the eye, ‘Well?’ I said.

  It took a while for Cash to collect his thoughts. ‘Christ!’ he said. Then, ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?’ I asked.

  ‘No, sure, go ahead,’ said Cash absently, his mind still going over the implications of what I had just told him.

  ‘Did you know that the Honshu Bank guarantee on the Tremont Capital bonds never existed?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said. Then his eyes flared up with anger. ‘You think I’m involved with this, don’t you?’

  Cash’s response seemed genuine enough, but his ability to bend the truth was legendary. I didn’t know whether he was lying now or not. ‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ I said.

  In a moment the anger was gone. ‘Yeah, I suppose it would,’ he said. He paused. ‘Look, you’ve had a rough time and I like you.’ He saw my eyebrows move up at this but held up his hand, ‘No, honestly I do. Some of my customers are jerks, and some of them are smart, and I rate you as one of the smartest. I’m not schmoozing you; after all, you are hardly my top client right now, are you?’ I had to agree with that last statement.

  ‘Anyway, I’d like to help you in any way I can. I wasn’t involved in any of this. I know you don’t believe me, but that doesn’t matter for now. Between the two of us we ought to be able to figure out who is really behind all this. Until we do that, you can keep me on your list of prime suspects if you like.’

  I could feel myself wanting to believe Cash. It was difficult not to. His offer certainly seemed worth a try at least.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s start with the launch of the Tremont Capital bond.’

  Cash smiled. ‘Good. Let me think. It was Waigel’s deal through and through. He had the relationship with the issuer, and he was the only one working on it in New York. He gave me a call one day, described the deal, and asked me whether I could place it. I remember he said it had to be done quickly.’

  ‘How did you decide who to approach?’

  ‘Come to think of it, Waigel suggested I should try the Harzweiger Bank. De Jong seemed a natural as well. This sort of thing is right up Hamilton’s alley. A little complicated, a little obscure, a nice yield if you are smart enough to get it.’ I nodded, it was the kind of bond Hamilton would like to buy. ‘In fact, the week before, Hamilton had asked me to look about for high-yielding triple-A deals for him. In the end the deal was easy. All placed in a morning. No need for anyone else on the sales desk to get involved. Sweet deal.’

  ‘And very convenient for Waigel. The fewer clients and salesmen involved, the less chance of discovery.’

  Cash sighed. ‘I guess you are right.’

  ‘Now, what about Phoenix Prosperity? Did you know that it was owned by Tremont Capital?’

  ‘No. I had no idea who owned it. But something very strange was going on there. Come to think of it, it all started quite soon after we placed Tremont Capital.’

  Cash took a sip of his beer. ‘I had been doing great business with Jack Salmon. He would buy and sell bonds all day, taking a profit whenever he made an eighth of a point and sitting on big losses whenever he got it wrong. A salesman’s dream. Big-buck commissions.

  ‘Then, suddenly, things changed. He was still active, so I was happy, but he started to make money. He would put on these large, very risky trades. You know, junk bonds, derivatives, CMO strips, reverse floaters, all kinds of complicated stuff. Some went badly wrong, but he was certainly making more than he was losing.’

  ‘It seems a bit odd that Jack Salmon made money out of those things,’ I said.

  ‘It certainly does,’ said Cash. ‘But it wasn’t him. He never took any major decisions himself. Of course he pretended it was him deciding what to do, and I went along with it, but I always made sure he had time to put the phone down and consult with whoever he needed to before coming back to buy my bonds.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ I said. I told Cash how I had seen Jack consult someone before buying the Fairways.

  We were silent for a bit.

  ‘I knew Dick was a bastard, but I didn’t know he was that much of a bastard,’ Cash said, mostly to himself.

  ‘You knew him when you were a kid?’

  Cash sighed. ‘Yeah, I did. We weren’t real close. I guess I was a bit more popular than Ricky. He didn’t call himself Dick until much later. He looked like a nerd,
and acted a bit like one. He used to get a hard time from the other kids until…’ Cash tailed off.

  ‘Until?’ I said.

  ‘Until he started selling drugs. He teamed up with two big mean apes, and supplied all the drugs to the kids in our neighbourhood. Oh, Ricky never sold the stuff personally. He was too smart for that. But he was behind it all.

  ‘I remember there was another kid who tried to muscle into Ricky’s territory. He ended up with a knife in his kidneys. Everyone knew it was one of Ricky’s guys. I guess Ricky must have been behind it.’

  ‘But you are still a friend of his.’

  ‘Oh yes. I mean, Ricky was smart. He realised there wasn’t a great future in peddling drugs in the Bronx. So he got himself into Columbia and then Harvard Business School, and a top job in investment banking. It doesn’t take just brains to do that. It takes a lot of dedication.

  ‘I told you how I was proud of putting guys on to Wall Street. Well, Ricky was one of the most successful of us, and I guess I kind of admired him. Sure, I knew he sailed close to the wind, but you have to get things done somehow. And we did some sweet deals together, so I could overlook the odd misdemeanour. But killing Debbie Chater, and Greg Shoffman?’ Cash shook his head.

  ‘We don’t know who killed Debbie,’ I pointed out. ‘It looks like it wasn’t you, and Waigel was in America. But the police think they know.’

  Cathy and Cash looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘Inspector Powell is convinced that I killed her,’ I continued. ‘He says he has a witness.’

  Cathy looked horrified. ‘That’s ridiculous. He’s not serious, is he?’

  ‘He’s very serious.’

  ‘But he hasn’t got proof.’

  ‘I don’t think he has got all the evidence he needs yet. But I am afraid he might find it,’ I said.

  ‘But how could he?’ Cathy asked.

  ‘Someone could feed him some more. Or I wouldn’t put it past Powell to make it up for himself.’

  ‘So who’s his witness?’ asked Cash.

  ‘I suspect it’s probably Rob,’ I said. ‘Cathy mentioned he saw me with Debbie that evening. But why he would lie to the police is beyond me.’

  ‘Perhaps he killed her,’ said Cash.

  ‘Perhaps he did.’ It could have been him. Or it could have been Joe, or Waigel or even Piper. But Rob was in love with Debbie. Joe had denied that he had killed her. Waigel was in New York at the time. And Piper had seemed genuinely unaware of Debbie’s death. We just didn’t know. It could even be someone totally different, a professional hit-man hired by Waigel, who, once he had dealt with Debbie, had disappeared into the dark and rain.

  We discussed all this for an hour without getting anywhere. Finally, we gave up. We drank up and headed upstairs into the dusk of the September evening. Cash bade Cathy and me good night as he got into a cab. His almost lascivious grin suggested that the latest development in our relationship had not escaped him. Cathy and I walked the mile or so to a romantic little Italian restaurant near Covent Garden, and had a very pleasant meal, washed down with a bottle of Chianti. Afterwards, we tossed a coin, I lost, and joined Cathy in a taxi headed for Hampstead.

  I got back to my flat at eight the next morning. As soon as I walked in the doorway, I sensed something was wrong.

  I shut the door carefully behind me, and stepped into the sitting room. Everything was untouched, just as I had left it the day before. A draft of air blew in from the direction of my open bedroom door. Cautiously, I looked in.

  A pane of glass was broken in my bedroom window.

  Bloody hell! Another break-in. I had been broken into only two months before. I didn’t know why they bothered. There wasn’t anything much to steal.

  With a rush of panic, I looked back in the sitting room. My medal was still there. So too were the replacement TV and cheap stereo that I had bought after the last time. I opened my small drinks cupboard. Nothing seemed to have been touched there either.

  I went back into my bedroom, and took another look at the window. Someone had climbed on to the roof of the shed below, broken the glass, opened the latch and crawled in. I cursed myself for leaving it unlocked, but I usually slept with it open during the summer, and it was too much of a bore to get out the key and lock it every morning.

  I spent ten more minutes checking the flat again, but as far as I could make out, I hadn’t lost anything. I sat down and thought about it for a moment. I couldn’t for the life of me think why anyone would want to break in and not take anything.

  Odd.

  For a moment, but only for a moment, I considered reporting it to the police. After my recent experiences, that did not seem an appealing prospect. Besides, there was nothing really to investigate.

  So, I got down to work.

  The TSA was a disappointment. After following through Cathy’s logic, I was convinced that they would see that if Cash was cleared of insider trading, then I had to be as well. But Berryman was having none of that. He admitted that there was no conclusive proof implicating me, but said I was still under investigation. I asked him about the deal he had made with Hamilton where the TSA had promised to call off the investigation if I was fired. He refused to comment on this, simply saying that arrangements between De Jong and myself were none of the TSA’s business. He then referred darkly to ‘parallel investigations’. That must be bloody Powell.

  I was angry when I put the phone down. I had counted on total exoneration there and then. More fool me. I was also annoyed, but not entirely surprised, about Berryman not recognising his deal with Hamilton.

  Still, it wasn’t all bad. Berryman didn’t have anything concrete against me, and in time I would be cleared. If Powell didn’t get me first.

  My brooding was disturbed by the phone. It was Cathy. She had been back through the trading tickets that Joe had written relating to his Gypsum of America position. It had taken her a couple of hours, but by working through them chronologically, she was able to piece together how Joe had built up his position, and what he had done with it. Half of it had been sold to the nominee account of a small Liechtenstein bank. Cathy had never heard of it, but Cash had. It was the bank Piper used occasionally for very sensitive trades. It was not traceable to him; only Cash, Joe, and perhaps two or three other trusted market operators knew about it. It would be difficult to prove absolutely that Piper had bought the Gypsum bonds, but it was clear enough to us that he and Joe had been working together.

  I got out a pad of paper, and began scribbling short notes, and crossing them out. I felt I was so close to unravelling the tangle. Tremont, the Tahiti, Gypsum of America, Piper, Joe, Waigel and Cash all seemed to be connected. Yet the more I thought about them the more jumbled the connections became. And then there was Rob. Rob, who had threatened Debbie, had threatened me and who had threatened Cathy. Passionate, unpredictable. But not a killer, surely?

  My thoughts were interrupted by the buzzer of my entryphone. I looked out of the window. It was the police again.

  I let them in downstairs, and stood at the door of my flat. There were four of them: Powell, Jones and the two uniformed men.

  ‘Can we come in?’ asked Powell.

  ‘No. Not without a warrant,’ I said.

  Powell smiled, and handed me some papers. ‘Which I happen to have just here,’ he said. He barged past me into the flat. ‘Come on, lads.’

  The flat looked even smaller with four large policemen and me in it. There was nothing I could do. ‘What are you looking for?’ I asked.

  ‘Let’s start with the records of all your share dealings, shall we?’

  Reluctantly, I showed him where my share contract notes, all four of them, were kept. I was not one of the stockmarket’s most active traders. Powell pounced on them, and quickly pulled out the Gypsum of America contract.

  ‘We’ll keep this, thank you,’ he said.

  The other three policemen were standing at his shoulder, waiting for instructions.

  He turned to the
m. ‘OK boys, take it apart.’

  They systematically did as they were told. They searched without much enthusiasm, very aware of Powell watching them. I tried to keep my eyes on everything they touched, especially Powell. I might have been paranoid, but I didn’t want Powell ‘finding’ something that I had never seen before. But I couldn’t watch all four at once.

  There was a cry from my bedroom. ‘Sir! Look at this!’

  Powell and I rushed through. One of the policemen was holding an earring. It was cheap, but bright, a long red droplet hanging down from a gold coupling.

  ‘Well done, lad,’ said Powell, grabbing the earring from the young policeman. He held it in front of me. ‘Do you recognise this?’

  I did recognise it. I felt cold. I nodded. ‘It’s Debbie’s,’ I said, my voice hoarse.

  ‘It certainly is,’ said Powell triumphantly. ‘She was wearing one just like it when we found her body. And only one.’

  His eyes never left my face, watching for every reaction.

  ‘Where did you find it?’ I asked.

  The policeman pointed to a half-drawer in the chest by my bed. ‘Right in the back of there.’ The drawer was pulled fully out, my socks strewn all over the rug by my bed.

  ‘You know exactly where it was,’ said Powell grinning.

  I felt a rush of anger. I had been right to be suspicious of Powell. ‘You planted that,’ I muttered.

  Powell just laughed. ‘They all say that. Every time. You could have thought of something more original, a bright boy like you. Come on, lads.’

  With that he left the flat, clasping the earring and my share contract notes, the three policemen trooping after him.

  As he passed me by the door, he leered. ‘Just you wait, boy,’ he said. ‘We’re nearly there. A couple more days and we will be having some very long talks. See you soon.’

  I tidied up the mess, and went for a run. I pushed myself harder today, driven on by my anger. As I sped round the park, my determination grew. Cathy was dead right. I had wallowed for far too long. I was in a mess, but I would fight my way out of it. I wasn’t quite sure how but I was determined to find a way.

  Powell was really beginning to worry me. I had no idea how the earring had got into my flat. He must have planted it.