It was one of her seclusion days; Daniel and I had been in town, we returned to the cottage late. She was waiting up for us.
Where’ve you been?
Town, Daniel said.
Did you ask me?
Daniel looked at me, suddenly nervous, he must have sensed what was coming.
Well did you?
No.
No, she said. No, you didn’t.
But then she seemed to soften; she stepped close to Daniel.
I was worried, darling.
She lifted her hands to his cheeks and touched him.
You must tell me, she said.
And then her fingers closed and she wasn’t touching his cheeks gently any more, but squeezing them hard. There were tears in his eyes.
Promise me.
Yes.
And then she hugged him so tight he had to pull himself free.
Now in my office window the ghostly figures fade into shadows. Daniel, more than most of us, bore scars.
After twenty minutes, Vance drops in to tell me that he’s arranged a meeting with Bainbridge this evening.
I mention Henry's birthday, but Vance already knows. He has told Henry not to get too carried away.
‘What did he say?’
‘He said he wasn’t in the market for advice.’ Vance has that look he used to get when he came to me complaining about Daniel. I remind him that if Henry becomes Treasurer, they will have to work together.
‘He’s got the job?’
‘Nobody’s got the job yet.’
Vance relaxes. He isn't looking forward to the announcement of Daniel’s replacement, I see. For all their disagreements, he had a grudging respect for Daniel’s professional abilities.
‘Right then,’ he says, taking a chair. ‘Other business.’
Parnells isn’t the only deal they're working on in Corporate Finance, just the biggest. Now Vance relates the state of play elsewhere. We’re defending an engineering firm in the Midlands from an unwanted bid: that one’s going well. There are three rights issues in the pipeline, all of them pushing hard to get their paper away before the market turns down: these, too, are on schedule. There’s a management team looking for advice on an MBO, a privatization contract in Bulgaria we’re hoping to win, and a host of smaller deals hovering somewhere between proposal and final signing. Vance confesses he’s lost track of these smaller ideals lately, but he promises to get on top of them again once the Meyers have bagged Parnells. I mention the closing date for acceptances of the Meyers’ final offer: just under two weeks away now. If the Meyers don’t have over half of Parnells by then, the offer lapses; they won’t be permitted to make another bid for Parnells till next February.
Vance squeezes his chin. ‘If we split the Parnells board, the whole pack of cards comes down. And this Ian Parnell looks promising.’
‘Promising for whom?’
‘The Hunt sets off at eleven. Haywood should be on his way down there by now.’
Vance agrees to let me know how it goes. We seem to have reached the end of our conversation, and Vance makes to rise. But then he pauses and drops back into the chair. ‘One other thing,’ he says. ‘Inspector Ryan. How long does he plan to keep calling on us?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. Why?’
‘Just wondering.’
‘Perhaps Lyle might keep him busy awhile.’ I scroll idly through the latest from Bloomberg. ‘But as long as he thinks he hasn’t got the full picture, Ryan’ll be back.’
Vance gives a grunt of displeasure, and I look up. I try to see what Inspector Ryan sees — a man who didn’t much care for Daniel? a murderer? - but it’s too hard to get past the man I know.
‘Stephen, between you and me, what do you make of Mannetti?’
‘Personally or professionally?’
‘Either. Both.’
He considers. ‘Not entirely my cup of tea. I take it this concerns the balls-up with Pamells.’
Not exactly. What it concerns is any proclivity Mannetti might have for violence, and there’s no way to approach that question except directly; but I hesitate. Hugh warned me that there might be more than one person involved in the fraud. And someone killed Daniel. Vance waits.
‘Something like that.’ I nod to the door. ‘If you see William or Henry out there, I’ll be ready in ten minutes.’
He takes this without batting an eye.
3
* * *
The morning meeting comes as a welcome relief after my second listless trawl through the Shobai numbers. William really has the gift of the gab; he bangs on for five minutes about possible implications following the latest split between the Chancellor and the Bank of England, a subject that bores me at the best of times. Henry makes an occasional intervention, but he seems to be waiting for William, a.k.a. Billy Bullshit, to run out of steam. William finally obliges.
‘Corporate bonds,’ I say, and I point to Henry. ‘You sent a memo to Stephen on the CTL issue.’
‘It was overpriced. We’ve still got a boatload.’ He recites a list of the larger institutions which suddenly lost interest when we set the final price. I jot down the names. Then I ask Henry how much of the CTL paper he thinks he can offload.
‘At the issue price? Fuck all. We start sellin’, the price’ll dump.’
‘Okay. Keep Vance informed with what you’re up to, but don’t offload it yet.’ I tap the list. ‘We’ll see if we can't encourage a few takers first.’
William has been rummaging through his folder, now he hands me a chart. He points out the salient features: the outlook for corporate bonds is bleak. When I try to pass the chart to Henry he keeps his arms staunchly folded, so I drop it on my desk and declare the meeting over.
They rise. William departs clutching his folder, but I signal for Henry to stay.
I glance down at the chart. ‘Happy birthday.’ When I lift my eyes, he is grinning. ‘I suppose it’s too late to postpone the lunch party,’ I say, and his grin fades and then disappears.
‘There’s twenty guys comin’,’ he says dismayed. ‘Jesus.’
I hold up my hands. I tell him to forget that I mentioned it.
‘I can't cancel it now.’
‘Henry, forget it. It’s your birthday, your party. The timing's not great, but we’ll get through it.’ I force a thin smile. ‘I didn’t buy you a present.’
‘Put it in my bonus.’
We both laugh, a rare light moment against the week’s dark backdrop. Then I ask who'll be looking after the Dealing Room in his absence.
‘I’ll still be here,' he says. 'Big Win's doing the food, up in the restaurant. I'll still be here.’
Only physically, I think. And anyway, we both know that the lunch party is almost certain to adjourn to the pub.
'Owen can handle things,' he says. 'If there's any major hassle, I'll come straight down.’
Not if I can help it, he won't. A drunken trader can cause serious problems in the Dealing Room, but a drunken chief dealer can cause absolute havoc. Our last chief dealer came in loaded to the gills one night and sold the Kiwi Dollar through the floor. We were still trying to explain ourselves to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand three weeks later. Once Henry leaves for lunch it will be the end of his working day: he knows it, but he doesn’t want to admit it. Pride. After greed and envy, the City’s third deadly sin.
We spend a few minutes discussing the outlook for the Dollar up to the weekend - long-term planning in the FX market — then Henry leaves.
Alone again, I reach over and flick on the PC screen: the columns of green numbers swim back into view. Rubbing my eyes, I reflect momentarily on how far my own pride has got me. Then I rest my face in my hands. Since last walking out of Hugh's office, I have got precisely nowhere with this. Nowhere at all.
So now I put aside my own pride, I pick up the phone and dial. Two rings, then it's answered.
‘Hugh, it’s Raef.’
Silence. I swivel in my chair and look down to the river
. A cruise boat glides slowly toward the bridge, a solitary passenger out on deck, taking in the grey scenery.
‘I’d like to come over.’ The silence draws out; the cruise boat passes out of sight. ‘Hugh?’
'Yeah,' he says.'I was wondering how long it'd take you to call.'
4
* * *
Hugh's whiteboard has been wiped clean. He’s on the phone when I enter, and he acknowledges me with a nod. Silently he mouths the words ‘one minute’, so I wander over to the wall and peruse the framed tributes to Hugh Morgan's many triumphs. There are letters of thanks and commendation from the Met Fraud Squad and the Serious Fraud Office. Others bear the insignia of foreign institutions, mostly American, but some written in Arabic and French. At the far end of the wall there’s a collection of caricatures, a private Rogues’ Gallery of the crooks Hugh has successfully despatched: some round and jolly, others thin and pensive, nearly all of them smiling.
Hugh hangs up the phone.
‘So,’ he says, ‘change of heart?’
I give him a chastened look, and he asks if Penfield is still threatening to move in on Friday night.
‘Not threatening. Promising.’
Hugh drops into his chair and leans back. He clasps his hands behind his head. ‘So,’ he says again, and he smiles.
Unlike others of our generation, unlike me, the passing years seem to have left him largely untouched. He looks much as he did up at Oxford, apart from the white hair, and it occurs to me now that the secret of his prolonged youth might actually be his work: unlike the rest of us, Hugh remains on the side of the angels. And he loves his job.
‘You’ve had a go at the numbers?’
‘Till my head aches,’I confess. ‘No joy.’
‘I meant what I said, Raef. You gave me some help on the Petrie fraud, and I probably owe you. But I don’t owe you enough to get myself compromised digging you out of a hole. I don’t owe anyone that much.’
‘You wouldn't be compromised.’
‘That’s for me to say. And if you think you're going to talk me round without clearing up this Odin Investments business first, don't bother. You could have saved yourself the trip.’
Beneath his stern gaze, my last hope of keeping Odin secret slowly withers.
‘We had a visit from the DTI,’ I tell him, but he makes no comment on that. He waits for my response on Odin. ‘It isn’t that easy, Hugh.’
‘See this?’ He touches a pile of documents on his desk. ‘Evidence to be used in the trial of Mr Habibi. I’ve been to Rabat, Beirut, Cairo, other places you’ve never heard of, putting this together. Once I’ve finished my report, he'll be charged. If the prosecution do their job properly he’ll be put away for a couple of years. That’s real, Raef. A thief goes out of circulation for a while. The world's a little bit of a better place.’
‘I understand that.’
‘No,’ he says quietly ‘No I don’t think you do. Because you’re interfering with this.’ He slams his hand down on the documents. Hard. I draw back in surprise. ‘You want my help, but you don’t want to give anything back. Make up your mind, Raef. Yes or no. Do I help you or not?’
I have developed the banker’s base instinct that everything is negotiable. It was a mistake, I see, to test that instinct on Hugh.
‘We did someone a favour,’ I admit warily.
‘Who’s “we”?’
‘The bank. Carltons.’
He gestures for me to continue.
‘Nothing illegal. It had approval right down the line.’
‘So what’s the big secret?’
‘National security.’
Surprised, he holds up his hand. ‘Hang on. Back- track a little. The Odin deal, the quick in-and-out on the Franc. Carltons dropped close to four million. You knew about that from the start?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who else at Carltons knew?’
‘No-one.’
‘Someone must have.’
I shake my head.
‘Then how’d the deal get done?’ He studies me The light comes into his eyes as he realizes. ‘You?’
‘Me.’ I explain that I put the paperwork through aflter-hours. ‘It didn’t go through the Dealing Room.’
He rises from his chair, paces to the window and then back to his desk, thinking. ‘I guess I don’t have to ask who it was that scrubbed the Odin deal from the disc then, do I?’ he says.
‘There wasn’t any need for you to know.’
‘Yeah, well now there is. Carltons deliberately dropped four million quid that went to Odin. Why?’ He raises a finger. ‘And before you try it, Raef, I don’t want to hear any shit about national security or the Official Secrets Act. It’s just you and me here, and it’s your last chance. Convince me I can trust you or I show you the door.’
Trust. It is a gamble I’ve lost once too often; but this time the gamble is Hugh’s. ‘There was an overseas defence contract,’ I tell him. ‘Some consortium from the UK lodged a bid against the French and Swedes. The French got knocked out early, but the Swedes were splashing a lot of money around, it looked like we’d lost it. Then right at the close my father got word a one-off payment could land the contract.’
‘That’s where Carltons came in?’
‘The consortium started bickering: who should pay what. My father saw the deal drifting away for no reason.’ I spread my hands. ‘It was a one-off.’
Hugh seems unfazed by what I’ve told him. He has the intent look of a man going deliberately about his daily work. ‘Your father couldn’t get it from the consortium in time, and I suppose he couldn’t risk carving it out of the Defence Budget. So he went to Carltons?’
‘This is the only time it’s ever happened.’
‘I’m sure,’ Hugh says; but his eyes say something else. ‘What did Carltons get for its troubles?’
‘The consortium won the contract. My father banged their heads together and two weeks later they covered Carltons’ loss.’
‘Through more Odin deals against your Treasury?’
‘Fees and advisory contracts.’
‘For which you do fuck all, I take it.’
Feeling diminished and rather grubby, I tell Hugh he has the general idea. What I don’t tell him is that it wasn’t just the consortium that was grateful. I don’t tell him that we received a pay-off from Her Majesty‘s Government in the form of a privatization contract. It will be altogether safer for him not to know.
He makes a slow circuit of the office, arms folded, staring at his feet. He doesn’t like what I’ve told him, but if he was going to show me the door he’d have done it by now. He stops abruptly and looks up. ‘How much do you think Mahmoud Iqbal kept?’
I freeze in my chair. There is an unpleasant prickling up the back of my neck. Hugh has somehow traced the beneficial ownership of Odin. And in the next moment I see something more: I see that if Hugh knew Mahmoud Iqbal was involved, he must already have guessed the nature of this affair before I even opened my mouth. He has, for the past five minutes, been jumping me through hoops.
‘He’s that arms trader,’ Hugh says. ‘Lebanese.’
I tell him, quite sharply, that I know who Iqbal is. The whole world knows who Iqbal is. Hugh comes back to his desk. I glare at him over the papers and pens.
‘Sorry, Raef. But I had to be sure you wouldn’t drop a anothe pile of bullshit on me.’
‘If everyone’s happy now,’ I say, ‘maybe we can start finding out if there’s anything to that note of Penfield’s.’
‘No luck with the Shobai numbers?’
I shake my head.
‘Not to worry. I’ve made an appointment with Shobai’s Treasurer this afternoon.’ When he sees my surprise, Hugh smiles. ‘Never doubted you for a moment,’ he says.
5
* * *
At lunchtime the office is quiet. Becky has gone out for sandwiches, and as I stroll past Corporate Finance I find that most of Vance’s team have disappeared too; it’s the middle of th
e week, and enthusiasm for work is fast on the wane. Surprisingly, I’ve had a good morning since returning from my meeting with Hugh. My paperwork’s up to date, the voice-mail’s answered, and I even had a chance to look at the new recommendations from the Accountancy Standards Board. My head seems to have cleared since passing on a portion of my troubles.
Up in Funds Management, apathy rages. A few lonely figures loll at their desks fielding lunchtime calls. There’s a TV in one corner, supposedly for CNN, but just now three £100,000-per-annum men sit glued to a Tom and Jerry cartoon. A section of flooring has been lifted, and two workmen in overalls are hauling up a tangled spaghetti of cables and wires. I ask how they're doing, but one gives me an ugly look so I move on. This place is much bigger now than when I worked here years ago, the warren-like maze of internal walls was stripped out last July. Bigger, but the atmosphere is somehow the same: things gone to seed, the vital force ebbing but never quite dying out. Moving on from here to Corporate Finance was like exchanging a broken-winded hack for a thoroughbred. Even the past six months’ shake-up from Mannetti has done little to dispel the torpor.
‘Come to pay us a visit?’ I turn to find Mannetti smiling at me in a friendly way. ‘You see the new cabling?’ he says, and he leads me back over there, explaining the ins and outs of the new wiring. ‘They’ll have it done by next week. Hey,’ he says addressing the two workmen. ‘Done by next week or what?’
He looks like he might press the point, so I steer him away. I tell him I’m drafting a letter of complaint to the DTI. I ask if he has any suggestions.
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