by Adrian White
“But it’s very entertaining,” said Mike, and smiled.
“It doesn’t get anything changed though. Jesus, they’ll talk about something for years and not feel the need to do anything about it.”
“Ah, there, now you are sounding English. You can’t expect people to just go ahead and do things, to actually achieve or change anything.”
“But I’m sick of all that Modern Life is Rubbish stuff,” said Katie. “I mean, it is rubbish but once you start noticing things, it becomes a compulsion – it’s impossible to stop. You walk into a public lavatory and there’s no room to stand as you try to close the door. The toilet roll dispenser that can’t dispense the toilet roll; the washbasin tap that soaks the front of your dress; the hand dryer that doesn’t dry your hands – they’re all clichés of modern life, but that doesn’t stop them being repeated over and over again. Why would someone go to the trouble of manufacturing a hand-dryer that doesn’t actually dry hands?”
“You see,” said Mike, “you’re good at it.”
“But it’s all so shit,” said Katie, “and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like there’s not enough in my life that I can ignore the shit I see all around me.”
“Time for a change, then?”
“I guess so,” said Katie, “but I don’t know what.”
“The world is full of crappy things, it’s true, but if you think too much about them it’ll drive you crazy. And don’t think for one moment that things are any different in England, because they’re not.”
“Oh I know all about England,” said Katie, “with their tunnel vision barmen who can only cope with one customer at a time, and the lottery of who they might choose to serve next – waiting for that special moment when they turn from the till and you hope to God you catch their eye. And calling time exactly on eleven, with ten minutes’ drinking-up time – they’re so fucking anal. I’m not sure I could stand all that again. Maybe I just need a holiday, or a break at least – South America might be a little drastic.”
“You could come and visit us in Manchester,” said Mike.
“I don’t think so,” said Katie.
Katie was aware that she’d reduced her life to such an extent that it was bound to result in a narrowing of her stimuli. You can only pick up a certain amount through the reading of a newspaper. She wasn’t exactly hiding in Ireland, but it was easier to control how she encountered the outside world. Her colleagues thought her excessively private; her position didn’t exactly encourage familiarity, and a lot of them were happy not to be chummy with the boss. Of course, her sexuality was a constant source of fascination, but even this was preferable to knowing every gory detail of your boss’s private life. But Katie knew that, really, this was no way to live her life.
She also knew that, without even trying, Mike had got more information out of her than she was comfortable with.
“What about you Mike?” she asked. “Did you stay in banking or not?”
“There were three business types,” said Mike, by way of an answer, “sat over there on the next table, an hour or so before you arrived. You know, suits and talking too loud and laughing. And I thought, is that really what I look like when I’m doing my stuff?”
“Only you don’t notice so much when it’s you?”
“Yeah, something like that – all three of them talking and not one of them listening to what the others were saying. One guy was the know-it-all – ”
“That’d be you, then?”
“Very funny. One was the know-it-all and you could tell the other two couldn’t stand him – ”
“Definitely you,” said Katie.
“But then, they couldn’t stand each other either. They all thought they were the one – the one most likely – and it was all about refrigeration, or some such shit.”
“Or banking – is that what you mean?” asked Katie. “It’s all shit, Mike; I thought you knew that better than all of us?”
Mike continued.
“The know-it-all – the big man – he didn’t wash his hands after using the toilet.”
“He what?” asked Katie.
“He used the toilet and didn’t wash his hands – I saw him.”
“You followed him to the toilet?”
“I didn’t follow him,” said Mike. “We happened to be there at the same time.”
“And he didn’t wash his hands – are you sure?”
“Most men don’t bother to wash their hands.”
“Some maybe, but not most?” asked Katie.
“Believe me,” said Mike; “most men don’t wash their hands after using the toilet. You notice your things and put them in your newspaper – well, I notice my things and that’s one of the things I’ve noticed.”
“That’s gross,” said Katie.
“At least two out of every three, I’d say. So two out of those three business types – two out of the three refrigerator men – go straight from the toilet and back into the bar for their drink.”
“I’m not sure I’d want them to be looking in my refrigerator, not with habits like that,” said Katie.
“Think about that the next time some bloke is chatting you up and offers to buy you a drink.”
Katie smiled. They sat quietly for a moment or two.
“So, Mike,” she said, “are you going to tell me what you’ve done for the past twenty years, or do I have to beat it out of you? Did your early banking fraud ever catch up with you?”
“You mean all those accounts I used to run when I first went to college? No, they must have been on too small a scale for them to care; I guess they were written off in the end. I bet you’ve written off millions in your time, haven’t you?”
“The larger the amount,” said Katie, “the easier it is to right off. But the little guys – we normally stick to them like shit. I’d have hounded you into the ground if it was my bank’s money.”
“Some of it probably was,” said Mike. “I don’t think there was a bank in Manchester that I didn’t open some form of an account in.”
“What did you do after college then?” asked Katie. “Did you ever follow up on your scholarship?”
“No,” said Mike, “I’d had enough of banking and investments for one lifetime. I didn’t really do much for a while – I went back to Belfast, but I couldn’t stick that for much longer than a summer. Even when I moved over to Manchester again, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do.”
Mike hesitated for a moment.
“I was getting over you, actually,” he said. “I knew where you were working, or where I guessed you were working, and I was very tempted to try to find you.”
“What were you using for money?”
“I had a bit of money but not that much and I knew I couldn’t go on like that for ever. I just couldn’t seem to get going again; anything I thought of doing never really amounted to much. You know, I was even beginning to doubt myself.”
“No,” said Katie, and smiled, “not the great Mike Maguire?”
“It’s true, it’s true,” said Mike. “It was a new experience for me and I didn’t like it, not one bit. Every week there’d be more factories closing, industries being shut down, and another million on the dole. I was beginning to think I didn’t have the luxury of turning down jobs from investment bankers who had paid my way through college.”
Of course, Mike didn’t mention that he might well have been prosecuted if he’d tried to work for an investment bank, but Katie let this pass.
“So what happened?” she asked. “What did you do in the end?”
“It was Eugene actually,” said Mike, “who helped me out eventually. Do you remember Eugene, from college?”
“Of course I do,” said Katie. There were so few people who had actually featured in Katie’s life; it wasn’t hard to remember them all.
“Well, we went into business together, and we’ve been partners more or less ever since.”
“You and Eugene in business together – now that I�
��d like to see. What do you do?”
“Don’t laugh,” said Mike. “We’ve done well together. We started off designing computer systems for businesses – you know, helping them get set up – and then moved into training for their staff and maintenance for the systems we installed.”
“Please tell me Eugene does the technical stuff,” said Katie.
“Of course,” said Mike, “although there’s not so much of that these days, and what there is we have more than enough people to cover it.”
“So what did you bring to this wonderful business you have together?”
“Well, in the early days Eugene would tell me about all these fantastic things his processors could do, but he had no idea what possible use they could be. You can imagine him, can’t you? He was so out there – every day he’d be coming to me with some incredible development he’d read about, but without a clue as to what it might actually mean.”
“And that’s where you came in?”
“More or less,” said Mike. “Eugene was often bitterly disappointed by the mundane things I’d ask him to produce. You just had to look at any business, whether it was retail, or transport, or manufacturing, or banking even – they were all so desperate for new systems to help do the simplest of tasks. It’s difficult to think back now just how hopeless people felt when it came to computers.”
“And you were there to put their minds at rest? God help them!”
“No, that’s not fair. I’d look at their business and suggest ways in which we could help. Eugene gave them the confidence to hire us, because they could see he was a whiz, and I was able to explain what Eugene could do in a language they could understand. I had to laugh when Eugene and I were implementing systems to allow real-time banking – you know, put your money in the account in London and withdraw it two seconds later in Manchester. Talk about poacher turned gamekeeper.”
“You don’t say,” said Katie. “Once again the banking world is in the hands of Mike Maguire – it’s a terrifying thought.”
“Aren’t you ever tempted to do just one last fraud?” asked Mike. “Surely it’d be easy for you to transfer huge amounts into a private account somewhere?”
Katie thought for a moment that might be why Mike was here – to suggest some crazy scheme to steal a load of money.
“That’s just the point,” she said. “It would be one final fraud, and then they’d put me in jail. I think we did enough of that for one lifetime, don’t you?”
Maybe so,” said Mike, “maybe so.”
Once again, they were both quiet; neither wanted to get on to Vegas just yet.
“Did you ever get married?” asked Katie after a while.
Mike nodded.
“Yes, I did,” he said. “I got married just after I moved back to Manchester.”
“So it didn’t take you that long to get over me?” asked Katie, and smiled.
“I guess not,” said Mike. “Not when you look at it like that.”
“What’s her name? And are you still married?”
“Her name’s Margaret and yes, we’re still married.”
“And you knew her before you met me, yes?”
“Was it that obvious?” asked Mike.
“Well, it figures,” said Katie. “You never really chased after anyone else in Manchester, and that’s a pretty short time to meet someone and get married – that would have been some rebound. Do you love her?”
“Yes, yes I do.”
“That’s good then,” said Katie.
“And you – did you ever meet anyone? Did you ever get married?”
Katie looked at Mike.
“No,” she said, “I never met anyone. I spent my life yearning after some guy I knew in college, but I let him slip through my fingers. And now I find after all these years that he was two-timing me all along – can you believe that?”
“Now that’s not fair – ” began Mike.
“Don’t worry,” said Katie, “I’m only winding you up. I’m still on my own and you know that’s the way I like it, so it looks as though we both got what we were looking for, yes?”
“I guess so,” he said, and reached for his drink. Mike noticed that Katie had finished her vodka and orange. “Would you like another?”
“No, no thanks,” she said. “Another one of those and I’ll be in bits. That hit the spot, though, thank you.”
Katie waited a moment, and then asked Mike what she’d come to find out.
“So,” she said, “are you going to tell me why you needed to call me? Why you had to break our agreement after all these years?”
“I owe you an explanation,” said Mike, “I know. And I’m sorry I had to do this, especially if it disrupts what you have going here, but I’ll say what I have to say and then I’ll be gone, I promise. And I really do need your help.”
“Go on,” said Katie, coolly.
“Bruno never collected on his money,” said Mike.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Katie. “Is that the thing that’s bugging you?”
“The thing that’s bugging me is I can’t understand why. Whatever he decided to do, he was going to need that money at some point, but he never did.”
“Well, he was an adult,” said Katie, “even if he didn’t always behave like one. I can’t imagine he ever rationally decided what to do; he just did what he did without ever thinking. He knew how to get hold of his money; he just had to be sober enough to get around to it.”
“Did you ever see him again?” asked Mike. “Once you’d left me in Vegas?”
“No, thank God! I flew home alone and was all the happier for it. Remember that stunt he pulled with the fork? That was only a part of it – he’d tried it on with me back at the hotel, and it wasn’t very pleasant.”
“So what happened to him, then?” asked Mike.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care, and I can’t believe that after twenty years you’re still feeling responsible for Bruno.”
“I don’t feel responsible – I just want to know what happened to him.”
“Because you think it’s going to come up when they go after you?”
“Partly, yes.”
“And how do you know he never touched it?” asked Katie. “Does that mean you were keeping track of my money too?”
“I obviously knew where I’d put Bruno’s money,” said Mike, “so it was easy enough to check. I wanted to make sure he was okay. I knew you’d move your money right away, so there was little point in checking up on you. But the fact that Bruno’s stash remained untouched was more worrying than if he’d blown it all within a month – in fact, I expected him to blow it all in a month.”
“All that money must be worth a fair bit by now,” said Katie.
“Well, yes,” said Mike, “although not as much as if it had been managed from day one. I had to leave it where it was for a long while, just in case Bruno ever reappeared to claim it; after several years though, it became obvious he wasn’t coming back. I didn’t like the idea of it just sitting there, easily traceable back to me and the Halibro share deal.”
“So you hid it?”
“Yes, I hid it and started investing it, so it would keep its value – just as you did with yours, I presume.”
“So, what’s your problem?” asked Katie. “If they can’t trace your money, you’ll get to keep it regardless of what they throw at you.”
“Bruno’s money,” corrected Mike.
“Whatever,” said Katie. “We both know he’s not going to come looking for it now.”
“Do we?” asked Mike. “I know he won’t be able to find his money, but that won’t stop him trying to find me.”
“Just like you found me?”
“I told you, that didn’t take so much – I only had to open the newspaper.”
“And you read the Irish Sunday Independent at home, do you?” asked Katie. “Bruno’s not coming back, Mike, you know that. He’ll have got into some scrape or other – you saw the state he was in th
at night. You knew he wouldn’t last two minutes and he didn’t; he was out of his depth in Vegas, and it’s not the kind of place to suffer fools – or losers.”
“So what do you think happened to him?”
“Anything could have happened to him – what does it matter? He’ll have been looking for drugs or something – why should we care?”
“I don’t know how you can be so callous,” said Mike. “He was our friend.”
“I’m not being callous, “ said Katie. “I’m being honest. He was your friend and I didn’t like him. I hated having him around. I could never understand what you saw in his company, and I can’t believe you still care.”
“You two were more alike than you chose to admit,” said Mike.
“Maybe so,” said Katie, “and maybe that was the problem, but I don’t care. I just don’t care what happened to him, Mike, and if that’s all you’ve come here to find out then I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”
“But if something had happened to him, there’d be a report of it somewhere. I know he never left the States – to this day he’s still listed as being illegally in the country – but how could he survive without money?”
“Jesus, Mike! How many times do I have to say it? I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care!”
Katie had raised her voice and was attracting the attention of some people at the next table; she stared them down when they looked over.
“And what about me?” asked Mike. “Do you care about me?”
“Of course I care about you,” said Katie, “but I’m only just getting used to the idea that you’re here. I’ve spent twenty years on my own, Mike; you can’t just walk right back in and expect to pick up where we left off way back then.”
“I know and I’m sorry and as I said, I didn’t do it lightly – ”
“Stop saying that! I don’t care how lightly you did it – it’s fucking with my head, that’s all I know. I don’t know what you think I might be able to do to help and, in fact, these were the very circumstances in which you said we shouldn’t get in touch. All the lengths we went to – that you went to – to make sure there was no connection from me to the money from Halibro. Why bother, if at the first hint of trouble you come running to me?”