‘I’m not sure.’
‘Keith, you hauled me out here because you didn’t want to speak on the phone. It’s cold, and I don’t have the time.’
He repockets his handkerchief, looking glum. After what he’s discovered this afternoon, the attractions of rejoining Carlton Brothers have paled: he doesn’t. want to be the last passenger to board the Titanic. He leans against the wall and studies the light on the water. ‘They reckon you owe two million to Sandersons,’ he says.
14
* * *
‘We can forget about Shobai,’ Hugh tells me. ‘Their Treasurer opened the books for me.’ He’s been waiting for me to get off the phone ever since the maid let him in. She’s gone now, and we're alone in the drawing room.
‘He showed you?’
‘I spent weeks with this guy, remember. The suicide? I tell you, he doesn’t want any more trouble. He showed me the lot.’
I slump into the sofa. Our best lead on this fraud thing has suddenly disappeared. I ask Hugh if he’s sure.
‘Raef, he went through the paperwork with me. Anyone who’d signed anything, we called in. Front and back office. I talked to a dozen of them.’ He drops into an armchair. ‘Nothing.’
His laptop sits alongside a folder on the coffee table; I stare at it bleakly. I’ve just hung up on Sir John, he hasn’t had a decision from Matthew Harris yet; and Henry rang earlier to say that he’d tried trading into Sydney and Tokyo — no luck. My father, too, I've spoken with. The prognosis is grim.
‘We kept looking for Shobai so we kept finding it,’ Hugh explains.
‘Where does Ryan fit in?’
‘Okay, take Ryan. He was on the Shobai suicide. Shobai was City, Stewart’s murder looks like City, so Ryan gets the case. When we see him, we jump to a conclusion.’
I remind him that the Shobai deal came up in his computer search.
‘I loosened the parameters for the Shobai deals. Same again. I was looking for Shobai, so I found it.’
We look at each other. We have two days left, and as of this moment we are nowhere.
While I get up to fix us both a drink, Hugh gives me a brief recap on the meeting he’s just had with Penfield. ‘What did you do? Poke him with a stick? He almost chewed my head off.’ Hugh turns in his chair. ‘And what’s this he’s saying about some other big problems at Carltons?’
I tell him to concentrate on the fraud note, to leave these other problems to me.
‘You don’t get it, Raef. The way Penfield’s telling it, you’re hanging on by the skin of your teeth. I can help, but I need the full picture. I swallowed your fancy Odin deal, but frankly, you can’t afford to dick me around like that again. So,’ he says. ‘Let’s hear it.’
I take his drink across and place it on the side- table. ‘You must be sorry I ever came knocking at your door.’
‘Yep,’ he says. And he isn’t smiling.
Returning to my chair, I put aside my drink. What’s the point of hiding it from Hugh? After everything that’s happened, I’m getting a queasy feeling that I am not fighting isolated problems here. And if there’s anyone who might be able to pick his way through the maze, it’s Hugh. So as directly and as openly as I can, I tell him the whole story: the Mannetti cock-up; the squeeze in the Dealing Room; our difficulties in the Parnell takeover; Darren Lyle; I even mention Ryan’s interviews with Vance. At first Hugh stops me every few minutes to ask a question, but gradually he falls quiet and when I finally end my story he hasn’t spoken for a quarter of an hour. The only information I hold back is about Annie; that, and Sir John’s 'arrangement' with the clearer.
His glass is empty now; he considers it thoughtfully. ‘Jesus,’ he says.
‘Penfield didn’t tell you any of this?’
‘Not likely. He wanted the same as you: pick my brains and keep me in the dark.’
When I mumble a few words of apology, Hugh shrugs it off.
‘Not the best few days of your life,’ he remarks.
‘Do you think it ties in? The fraud note with everything else?’
‘I’m not a psychic, Raef, but sure, I’d say so.’ He pauses. ‘We’ve knocked Shobai out, okay? And Odin. That leaves just one name from those three I turned up. Twintech.’
‘You said Twintech was too small.’
‘Look, we can’t go back and start again. It’s either Twintech or I’ve run out of ideas. I didn’t give Penfield the name, if it’s any consolation.’
‘He agreed to stay out of it?’
‘Only till Friday night. After that he'll turn Carltons upside down.’ Hugh flicks his glass. ‘The only reason he’s not putting the cleaners through you now is it’ll look bad for him. He made his big mistake when he let you put me onto this instead of his own team. Now he’s just hanging on and hoping.’ Confirmation, if I needed it, that Penfield fears for his job. ‘Unhappy man,’ Hugh says.
I offer to fix him another drink, but he declines. He flips open the folder and takes out a sheet. After studying it a moment, he remarks that Twintech has made less than two million pounds out of its dealings with Carltons. ‘Not much.’
I make a sound.
‘I mean not big enough for someone to get killed over,’ he says. ‘That’s what we’re discussing here, isn't it?’
‘It’s a possible fraud.’
‘It’s definitely trouble with Darren Lyle from what you’re saying.’
I consider this. I ask if he thinks Ryan should be told.
‘He’s investigating a murder, Raef, of course he should know.’ He looks as if he can’t believe I’ve asked the question. Dropping his eyes, he adds, ‘He called for a chat this afternoon.’
Ryan called Hugh? This bombshell leaves me floundering. Our investigation is being filtered through to Ryan by Penfield; and Penfield assured me that Ryan need not know who the investigators were. If Ryan finds out I’m involved, he will erupt.
‘How did Ryan hear you're working on this?’
‘He hasn’t. He just wants me to run my eyes over something. My guess is, the reports he’s got from Penfield.’ Our reports. And not knowing where they’ve originated, Ryan has approached Hugh for a second opinion. Hugh smiles, the irony amusing him. ‘I told him I was tied up.’ Then he scans the Twintech sheet again. ‘I need a dumpdown on this lot,’ he says.
Now I lead him through to my study. After logging on and keying in the password, I give him a quick tour through our system. He leans over my shoulder asking questions. Ten minutes of instruction and he says he has the general idea. I tell him I have to make some calls, that I’ll be in the drawing room if he needs me. He doesn’t reply. He slides into the chair, fingers on the keyboard, eyes fixed on the screen. For the moment, at least, I have lost him.
For the next three hours I’m on the phone, making calls. My father, from his flat, is doing the same. Influence. Pressure. There are credits in the City that pass unrecorded in any balance sheet, and now we’re calling our favours in. Most of those I speak to are wary: not one of them asks me about the deal we are supposed to have reneged on. When I mention it, they sound as if I’ve just jogged their memories. Yes; there was some story they'd heard. No, of course they wouldn’t pull our trading line because of a rumour. ‘It’s a lie,’ I tell them. ‘It's not a rumour, it’s a lie.’ Then I remind each of them of the particular favour he owes us. But in the space of three hours, I manage to extract just two promises to reopen the trading lines; the rest fob me off. And I can’t plead. To be phoning like this already shows signs of weakness. So I thank each of them with whatever courtesy I can raise, a dwindling supply as the night wears on.
In the middle of it all, Hugh appears from the study. He sees I’m on the phone, so he holds up a disc for me to see. He points to himself, then the door. ‘See you in the morning,’ he whispers.
I nod, and he shows himself out.
The voice in my ear keeps talking, saying he never really believed Carltons reneged on a deal; saying he'll look into it tomorrow; saying that
he can’t make any promises.
I assure him, politely, that I quite understand.
15
* * *
Nights are the worst. For the past three months it’s usually been something in my dreams that wakes me, but not tonight. This time I simply open my eyes and stare into darkness. ‘Go to sleep,’ I used to tell Theresa when I woke to find her lying like this beside me. But I won’t sleep now, not until I’ve been downstairs, made a hot drink and maybe sat for a while. So after a minute I roll over and push back the bedclothes.
In the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil, I play a round of the Corporate Banker’s favourite game: Scenarios and Outcomes. Scenario One has everything going right from now on: we get all our trading lines back, Twintech turns out to be a chimera, Hugh and Inspector Ryan both find nothing, Carltons prospers as an independent merchant bank. But somehow at this late hour, sitting in bathrobe and slippers, I can’t quite bring myself to believe it. We’re already too far down a different road. Scenario Two is the bid: Sandersons launches a bid and gets us, or Sandersons launches a bid and we throw ourselves into the embrace of a white knight like American Pacific. Either way my family loses control of the bank. My father, I know, is preparing himself to accept this; but the best I can manage is to let the awful possibility skate briefly over my mind. Scenario Three, the big one, is full-scale disaster: the fraud is real, the whole Odin business comes out, Ryan arrests me on suspicion of Daniel’s murder, Annie is used as evidence, and the tabloids descend on my family. Even the glimpse I allow myself of this possibility starts a bead of perspiration down my neck. My hands turn moist. Please God, I think, not like that.
I take the hot drink through to the drawing room. If Scenario Three unfolds, I know exactly what will happen.
Slumped here in the armchair I try to relax, but instead the scenes of a family tragedy I witnessed five years ago come back to me. A slow-playing tragedy in which, month by month, the Amershams, a family much like my own, was destroyed. We’d had lunch with them just a fortnight before the news first broke in the press. Bernard Amersham was talking of buying more land, expanding the boundaries of their estate: I’m sure he had no idea what was coming. A week later his son James was arrested by the DEA in the States; that was enough for one tabloid headline. The parents were certainly embarrassed, but at that stage the charge wasn’t known. Only as the weeks passed, and they flew back and forth visiting their son, did it become clear how serious the problem was. James, it turned out, had invested family money in an air-freight business in Florida; and hand-in-hand with the legitimate business went a drugs distribution network covering most of the southern US. James claimed he had no idea, but the tabloids descended like a baying pack on the Amersham estate: one estate worker received five thousand pounds for her story of supposed debauches up at the big house; another sold photos taken in the Manor House bedrooms. And while these were being splashed across the tabloids, the full scale of James’ investment in the freight business came to light. He'd committed nearly everything, not just his own money, but his family’s. The Manor and a few hundred acres remained unencumbered, but almost every other asset was frozen pending the outcome of the DEA investigation. The investigation lasted almost two years. The Amersham saga became a running joke, a regular column in Private Eye.
But for those of us who watched at close quarters, there was nothing amusing in the family's fall. James’ sister, furious at her parents for letting it happen, walked out; she took her trust fund and disappeared to Australia. Bernard became ill. No sooner had his wife nursed him back to health than she collapsed. And through it all the lawyers had to be paid, the jubilant press dealt with, and the American investigators answered; it was a complete and utter dissolution of their lives.
James is in gaol now. The Amersham fortune and good name has largely gone. My father and I were driving by their house last summer, and on the spur of the moment we turned in. I can still remember the look on my father’s face when he realized the bent and shuffling figure putting out a sign for Teas in the Orangery was actually Bernard Amersham. ‘Don’t stop,’ my father told me in a shocked whisper. ‘Drive on.’ That’s what we did, straight back to the road, with neither of us speaking a word.
Now, here in the darkness of the drawing room, moist hand clasping my cup, I think of my own family. And I pray. I pray with all the strength I can muster. Please God, I pray, not like that.
THURSDAY
1
* * *
‘They should call any minute,’ Sir John says.
My father and I have arrived at the bank to find Sir John already at his desk. On my way through, I checked the Dealing Room; the dealers on the nightdesk told me that Henry waited till Tokyo opening last night before going home. It didn't help. The lie has gone global: no-one is accepting our name.
‘Had a rather torrid night of it,’ Sir John says, elaborating on his meeting with Harris and the others at the clearer. ‘They asked some very uncomfortable questions.’
‘You said they’re reinstating the line.’ He rang to tell me this at 2 a.m.
‘They’ll confirm it when they call. With luck, they’ll get one or two others on board.’
At the clearer they wants to cover their back. If they support Carltons alone now, it could invite queries about the relationship between us: the last thing they want is a journalist turning up our 'arrangement'. I’m pleased that Sir John's succeeded, but this really isn’t my kind of banking — my father’s either — and our congratulations are rather less than effusive. My father relates the results of his night’s work: he’s convinced half a dozen market players to deal with us again. I excuse myself and go back to my office.
Here I flick around the Reuters screens, checking prices: London trading hasn’t opened yet, and there’s no mention of Carltons on the news screens; that could change very suddenly. Gary Leicester calls.
‘So,’ he says. ‘What’s our story?’
I’ve spoken with him once already this morning, as soon as I woke. Like Sir John, he’s had a torrid night. He has been responding to a barrage of questions from the financial journalists about the rumours.
‘Just keep denying it,’ I tell him. ‘Anyone says they’re going to print it, you can put them through to me.’
‘They won’t disappear.’
‘They will if there’s no story for them, Gary.’
He tells me one of the broadsheets is going to run a piece on Daniel. ‘Their angle is he was tied in with some City suicide a few months back. I told them it was bullshit, but they’re running it anyway.’
I thank him for the warning.
‘I’m not sure I can hold these guys off much longer, Raef. If the situation at Carltons improves, they’ll go away. If it doesn’t . . . I do PR, not miracles.’
On that sombre note, our conversation ends.
Five minutes later my father comes to tell me that the expected call from Harris has come through. He can’t keep the relief from his voice.
‘They’re reopening the line.’
‘Who else?’
When he mentions the names of two more clearers, I take a deep breath, breathing out slowly. The pressure applied by Sir John has worked, we might get through this yet.
My father says he doesn’t think he can do any more, he has business at Westminster to attend to. ‘None of my lot should go back on their word.’ My lot, I presume, being those banks from whom he extracted promises last night. ‘If they do, call me, Raef. I’ll be back at lunchtime to see how you’re getting on. Unless you want me to stay now.’
But I decline the offer. It will be best if we maintain the illusion of normality. I can see he wants to say something else, but all he does finally is reach across and squeeze my arm, a gesture of affection and encouragement, before he goes.
At boardroom tables around the City our fate is being decided. But it’s out of my hands now. I sit here, quite alone, and wait.
2
* * *
&
nbsp; Activity: deals being done; numbers shouted. 8.30 a.m., and Henry and I stand in the Dealing Room surveying the scene. It’s not as it was two days ago, but there is life.
‘Must’ve been some arms you twisted,’ Henry remarks, and then we do a slow circuit of the Room together, stopping at various desks to chat with the dealers. There’s an almost palpable sense of relief in the air: they still have their jobs; their employer, it seems, is not going under. Owen Baxter shouts a profanity and everyone laughs, but the laughter has a strained quality - they’re trying too hard to be normal. The banks which made promises to my father have come through, and Sir John’s three clearers have reopened their lines to us. One of mine called-in-favours is already trading with us, and the other one’s reopening its line in an hour. We look like a Dealing Room; we look, for the moment, like we’re going to survive.
‘This permanent or temporary?’ Henry asks as we turn at the far end of the Room.
‘Permanent.’ I glance at him and smile. ‘In case anybody asks.’
Coming back down the second aisle, we pause by the bond desk: there are two empty chairs. Henry asks where this missing pair are, but no-one has seen them this morning. Henry doesn’t make a scene of it, he enquires about the gilts market, then strolls back with me to his own desk.
‘Those two have bolted. We’ll need replacements.’
I suggest that we should wait, that we can’t be sure they have gone.
‘I’m sure.’ Henry keep his voice low. ‘I heard they were sniffin’ around. Yesterday must’ve made up their minds. Two out of how many? After yesterday, you can’t complain, Raef.’
He is, I know, absolutely right. If all we’ve lost out of yesterday’s débacle is two bond dealers, we should be thankful.
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