The Mark and the Void

by Paul Murray

  ‘Where will we put their bodies, Howie?’

  ‘I’m not kidding. I know these types of guys. They’re cannibals. They’re not going to hire the team with the nicest biscuits.’

  I am in the gym at five the next morning, trying to work off some of my nervous energy. Ish arrives at half six with her hair newly and spectacularly blonded. For the next couple of hours we swivel in our chairs, drink endless coffee, leaf unseeingly through documents like students before a final exam.

  I’m talking to Brent ‘Crude’ Kelleher, trying to get a read on the latest shifts in the oil market, when there is a groan. A group of analysts is gathered in front of the TV, where the German chancellor is making an announcement. Even without hearing her, I can tell the news is bad. ‘Look at that fucking face,’ Dwayne McGuckian says. ‘She looks like she just ate a bag of dicks.’

  It had been hoped that at the latest summit Germany, as the only country in Europe with any money, would come forward with a plan to stabilize the teetering banks and the increasingly rickety-looking governments holding them up. Instead the Chancellor is giving a lecture on responsibility. Committed as we are to the European project, we cannot endorse reckless fiscal behaviour …

  ‘Switch it off,’ Gary McCrum says.

  ‘Spread’s already gone up half a point,’ Jocelyn Lockhart reads off his terminal.

  ‘Scheisse,’ Jurgen mutters.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Kevin says, arriving on the scene. Ish explains that Germany is refusing to step in to cover the losses of the weaker nations; even before the press conference has ended, the amount of interest investors are demanding before they’ll lend any more money to Ireland has jumped. Some of the ratings agencies are now publicly doubting the country will be able to pay its bills for much longer.

  ‘What happens then? If it can’t pay its bills?’

  ‘Someone else takes over. Probably someone with a German accent.’

  ‘Maybe they could send ’em a few slave girls,’ Kevin says. ‘Till they get the accounts sorted out.’

  No one laughs. This is not good news: not even a high-risk investor wants to put his money in a country about to go belly-up. Eleven o’clock comes and goes with no word from Tordale. Ish sits tentatively prodding her hair, as if it were a wild and unpredictable animal. Jurgen paces up and down, flipping a pen between his fingers. Kevin alone is oblivious, calculating in a spreadsheet what he might do with his bonus. ‘We’ll be promoted too,’ he tells me. ‘You should go for MD.’

  Losing patience, I’m about to snap that they aren’t coming, when Kimberlee rings through from Reception to say they’ve just arrived. Ten minutes later, they are on their way down from Rachael’s office; we put on our best smiles.

  I had imagined the fund would be staffed by Arabs, but the four men who step out of the lift are white and English. The eldest is maybe twenty-five. The others are barely more than boys, slight-framed, tender-skinned; with their braces and slicked-back hair, they resemble corporate hobbits, on their way to do a deal with Sauron. Their eyes are bloodshot and their faces pale, and one of them has skinned the knuckles on his right hand. The leader introduces himself as James Harper. The others, who all seem to be called Olly, eye Ish and nudge each other. Rachael’s expression as she hands them over to us is unreadable.

  Jurgen takes the party to the meeting room. The delegation doesn’t reply to his questions with anything more than monosyllables. Their suits reek of cigarette smoke and I can see a murky brown sweat-line ringing the collar of the boy walking ahead of me.

  ‘You had a chance to see the city yesterday?’ I ask him, when he catches me looking.

  He turns away again and says loudly, ‘This bloke wants to know if we saw the city yesterday.’ The other three emit low, lurchy laughter. ‘We saw a bit of it,’ he says to me, with a leer.

  ‘You boys have been “on the tear”, as we are saying here in Ireland,’ Jurgen says. ‘Maybe you are drinking a few Guinnesses, ha ha?’

  Ish shoots me a look that says, We are doomed.

  In the conference room we’re joined by Chris Kane from Sales, who makes a brief speech about Bank of Torabundo punching above its weight post-crash, adding that as our new CEO is a good friend of the Caliph’s, he looks forward to BOT and Tordale becoming friends too. Then we crack open our laptops and begin the presentation, a concise but forensic breakdown of the major and minor Irish banks and their prospects in this volatile environment. The visitors aren’t listening. They fiddle with their BlackBerrys, they smirk into space. It’s only when one of his team actually falls asleep and starts to snore that James Harper confesses – though this is not quite the right word, as his tone is more smug than contrite – that they didn’t get much sleep. ‘The lads from Danske Bank took us out for a pint last night,’ he says. ‘Though it ended up bein’ a lot more than one.’ He hooks an extremely expensive leather brogue over his knee and draws himself back in a yawn. ‘Those boys know how to ’ave fun,’ he says.

  ‘But do they know how free cash flow will bear on future share performance?’ Jurgen asks.

  I lean over to Kevin and mutter in his ear, ‘Get Howie.’

  * * *

  What’s the difference between a dead prostitute and a Ferrari? Did you hear about the Irish prostitute? What do you call a prostitute on a fishing expedition?

  Around the table, shiny pink faces grin at us. Howie snaps his fingers at the waitress; a minute later a fresh tray of lagers with single-malt chasers appears. ‘Now that’s the kind of woman I would love to have dead in my garage,’ Howie says as the waitress walks away.

  We are in Life Bar, treating the Londoners to ‘hair of the dog’. I am not used to drinking this early in the day, and already the room is swimming slightly. The Tordale delegation, however, look decidedly more lively.

  ‘Now I’ll tell you who you don’t want near your kids,’ Howie says, and proceeds to give a libellous but extremely well-informed account of a British cabinet minister’s private activities. Kevin gazes at him with naked adoration; James Harper punches him matily on the arm; the room revolves on its hitherto unused axis. No one has mentioned caliphs, banks or investment opportunities since the presentation. What time is it? Three? Four? Ish’s face has taken on a greenish look, either from the whiskey or the prostitute jokes; more of both keep arriving, like gatecrashers to an already oversubscribed house party, as well as a man Howie refers to only as ‘the Bulgarian’, who has made two visits to our table, on both occasions performing an elaborate handshake with the trader and then leaving again, without taking off his sunglasses. On the way to the bathroom I notice the floor canting to the left, as though tipping me towards the exit. Inside I find Howie and James Harper huddled in conversation by the cubicle doors. As soon as they see me come in they break apart.

  ‘Claude!’ Howie exclaims, as if I am a long-lost friend, or any kind of friend. ‘I was just telling James about you. This guy,’ turning to James, ‘is the best wingman you’ll ever have.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ James squints at me sceptically.

  ‘Women go crazy for him. ’Cos he’s French, see? They’re light years ahead of us over there. In France they actually teach you how to eat pussy in school.’

  ‘That’s exactly the kind of fing they ought to be doin’ in England,’ James Harper says seriously, regarding me now with a certain amount of appreciation.

  ‘Claude, we’re thinking about going somewhere a bit more lively, what do you say? How about VD’s?’

  My heart sinks. ‘Fantastic,’ I say.

  ‘Jimbo, why don’t you go and round up your troops and we’ll get a taxi,’ Howie says. When the Londoner is gone he puts his arm around my shoulder and leans in to me. It seems I can feel heat blasting from his face. ‘We’re going to nail these bitches, Claude,’ he says in a low voice. ‘We’re going to rape them and cut off their heads and bury them in the forest.’

  ‘Very good,’ I say uncertainly.

  ‘Do a line, it’ll keep you sh
arp. Do it,’ he commands, shuttling powder out onto the cistern.

  Now as I walk back the floor is trying to flip me up towards the ceiling. But I’m too smart for it! How brilliant and talented I am! Of course this deal is going to come off! There is no way anyone could resist our intelligence and charm. I put on my coat, wink at one of the hobbits. But as soon as the door opens, everything begins to slide again. Outside? Do we really have to go outside? Outside is not inside. A rash of oily sweat breaks out on my forehead. Fresh panics crowd in on the initial outside/inside scare. Howie couldn’t actually be planning to rape and murder the Caliphate’s sovereign wealth fund, could he? Sometimes with traders it is hard to tell.

  People are hurrying back and forth across the plaza with their briefcases and box files. We step between their grey insubstantial bodies as if through a sea of wraiths. The sounds of the city, the sky, the river, all of these things seem at one remove.

  ‘You’ve got these twunts too, ’ave you?’ James Harper flicks a hand at the sagging tents and wayward signage of the zombies encamped outside Royal Irish. ‘They’re all over the Square Mile. Facking waste of space.’ Putting his hands together, he bellows at them, ‘No one cares, you twunts!’

  Chris Kane grabs my arm. ‘This is going great,’ he mutters. ‘Those pie charts really got their attention.’

  I grin back at him as one might at a figment of one’s imagination one doesn’t want to offend. The hobbit beside me elbows my ribs. ‘Ten o’clock, mate,’ he says. I turn my head, my all-purpose false grin at the ready – and then see he is pointing to the window of the Ark, where Ariadne is on her hands and knees cleaning up a spill and inadvertently revealing most of her cleavage. The hobbit launches into an impressively comprehensive list of things he would like to do to Ariadne. I pretend I have not heard, step quickly ahead to the kerb.

  Glowing yellow roof-signs swim like radioactive clots down the artery of the traffic. Howie holds out a hand, and one cab, then a second, pull up to us. ‘Why don’t you ride with these two boys,’ Howie suggests to Ish, nodding to the two younger delegates, who gaze out of the cab’s dark interior like baby owls.

  ‘Actually I thought I might head home,’ Ish says.

  Howie is dumbfounded. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re going to VD’s!’ Ish protests. ‘You don’t want me there! I’d be cramping your style!’

  Gripping her shoulder, Howie takes her aside and hisses to her, ‘That’s the whole point! We’ve got gash coming to the club with us! That’s what makes us cool, and Danske squares!’

  ‘Gash?’ Ish repeats.

  ‘Do I have to tell you your job? Just get in the car. When you get home you can wipe the tears away with your big fat fucking bonus.’

  With her mouth tight shut, Ish climbs into the back of the cab. ‘I will ride in this car too,’ Jurgen says judiciously, and goes to the passenger door.

  The rest of us set off in the other taxi. Traffic is heavy: we move at a crawl past sparkling new office blocks, others barely begun, cranes that have not moved an inch in two years. ‘So free years ago this was the fird-richest country on the planet,’ James Harper observes. ‘And now it’s facked.’

  ‘Property bubble,’ Howie says. ‘Crashed the banks.’

  ‘They didn’t actually crash,’ Chris Kane interjects hurriedly. ‘The Minister guaranteed them.’

  ‘I ’eard about that,’ James Harper says. ‘Not just the deposits, right? He said they’d cover every fackin’ bond and loan and dodgy deal wiv the Russian mafia the banks was into. Why’d he do that then?’

  Howie shrugs. ‘Stupidity.’

  ‘The banks lied to him,’ I qualify. ‘About the size of their debts.’

  ‘And now Paddy’s got to pay for it, and the whole place is in the shitter, just like Greece.’

  ‘It’s different,’ Howie counters. ‘The Irish aren’t going to cause trouble. They’ll do what they’re told. Anyway, the problem here is the banks. In Greece, the problem is Greece.’

  ‘Yeah, but your Minister’s made the banks and Ireland the same fing, ’asn’t ’e, wiv ’is magic fackin’ wand of incompetence.’

  Howie shakes his head. ‘Greece is finished. This place will recover. In the meantime, there’s a lot of money to be made. It’s a national fire sale. You can get the whole water grid for half nothing. What’s that going to be worth in twenty years?’

  ‘Wawter’s been pushin’ us to get into Royal Irish.’ James Harper is silent for a moment.

  Howie glances at me. ‘Don’t know that that’s the first call I’d make. Word is they’re sitting on a black hole.’

  ‘Don’ tell Wawter that,’ James Harper says. ‘’E’s in ’em up to ’is tits.’

  I turn in my seat. It is very important, at a meeting like this, never to show your ignorance. But in my many conversations with Walter Corless I have never heard him mention Royal Irish, let alone seen any of their stock in his portfolio. Is he keeping secrets? Or is James Harper simply misinformed?

  Howie is telling him about other investment possibilities, retail banks with a million depositors available for 2 or 3 per cent of what they were worth two years ago. But the Londoner is hard to impress.

  ‘We’ve ’eard all the ’ard-luck stories. Every sodding bank in Europe’s been over looking for a few quid from the Gaffer. Most of the Yanks as well.’

  ‘But he could do very well out of it. Real estate, too.’ Howie gestures out the window at the pristine rows of empty buildings. ‘What is it they say? When there’s blood on the streets, buy property?’

  ‘Don’ tell me about blood on the streets, mate,’ James Harper says. ‘Oran, you put on a bulletproof vest before you get off the plane.’

  I turn again. ‘I thought the unrest hadn’t reached Oran.’

  ‘They keep it ou’ of the papers, don’ they. But the las’ time I was over there, they’d ’anged a load of revolutionaries across the road from my ’otel. Eleven geezers lined up along the street like We Are Fackin’ Dead FC. Fackin’ dogs barkin’ all night, tryin’ to chew their shoes off.’

  ‘Terrorists?’

  ‘Some bunch of ragheads comin’ ou’ of the deser’. You know the type, Koran in one ’and, AK in the uvver. Makin’ a big bleedin’ hullaballoo that the Caliph’s a blasphemer and not a proper caliph and all tha’.’

  ‘But he’s got things under control?’

  ‘’E’s got nuffink to worry about. Seen ’is bleedin’ Imperial Guard? Fifty fackin’ sand niggers seven foot tall that can kill a man wiv one blow. ’E’s all right. It’s every uvver cunt who’s shittin’ it.’ He shifts his weight, making his buttocks squeak against the vinyl. ‘Once Wawter’s got this wall finished, it’ll be easier. ’Opefully the Gaffer can keep a lid on fings till then.’

  As he speaks, we pull up at our destination; the suddenly sombre mood is lifted by the other Tordale delegates, who haul their leader from the cab with the happy news that they mooned a policeman en route. James Harper brightens immediately.

  Two bald, Puffa-jacketed sentinels are guarding a stairwell. Over their heads, a neon sign spells out VELVET DREAM’S. A deep, pulmonary thrum issues from the subterranean entrance; the four brilliantined visitors hasten boisterously down the steps towards it. Following after them, Ish momentarily catches my eye; I give her a sympathetic pat on the elbow.

  At the door we are met by a svelte girl wearing a kind of heart-shaped velvet bustier that covers half of her breasts and some legal minimum of her genitals. She leads us to a table; Chris Kane conspicuously passes her a credit card, and our guests, as if at a signal, start shouting drinks orders. Around us, girls glide constantly through the red-tinged murk. Some carry trays of drinks, others plastic gourds, which they shake like tambourines, soliciting ‘tips for the dancers’; others carry nothing at all, but bend in close to the men on the banquettes and whisper in their ears. Now and then one will get to his feet, as if he’s been fingered by the thought police, and be led away into the darkness. At the top of
the room is a stage, where a girl with long blonde hair and enormous, unreal breasts is spinning around a pole in metallic hot pants; as she pivots, faster and faster, hair and pants become interweaving rings of light, like some electrical phenomenon.

  ‘Busy,’ Chris Kane observes.

  ‘Recession-proof, innit?’ one of the hobbits says. ‘People’ll always want to watch a fit bird get her ganny out, good times and bad.’

  ‘Structurally, sex industry’s very robust,’ another hobbit agrees.

  ‘Look at the flamin’ structure on that,’ the third hobbit says, nodding at a statuesque girl in a thong who has arrived at our table. Her vampish maquillage and stupendous bosom cannot quite counteract a callow, bumpkin quality – perhaps it is in the way she stands, her shoulders squared as if ready to carry a hay bale.

  ‘Myou vont privet dents?’ she inquires.

  The Tordale delegation crack up. ‘You wot, darlin’?’

  ‘Privet dents?’ the girl repeats, shifting uncertainly. Ersatz gemstones glitter blankly from her thong.

  ‘A privet dance?’

  ‘You got a musical bush, love?’

  She is blushing now, the colour visible even in the degraded light.

  ‘Only teasin’ yer, sweetheart.’ The youngest hobbit pats her hand. ‘I’d love a dents.’

  The girl smiles uncertainly and performs a clumsy back step as the hobbit gets to his feet. Chris Kane hurriedly passes him the credit card; the hobbit takes it without even looking at him. As she leads him away, he gives his comrades a rascally grin. ‘I’m goin’ to put a great big dent in ’er privates!’

  ‘No touchin’, mate,’ his colleague reminds him. ‘Remember Birmingham.’

  Howie and James Harper are at one end of the banquette, deep in talk. Jurgen begins telling us how many Weissbiers on the market are strictly speaking not Weissbiers. One of the hobbits slides over to Ish. ‘Ow’igh’?’ he says.

  A famous banker once said that the key to gaining a client is to become his friend. People give their business to people they like; in banking, where what we actually do with the money becomes ever harder to explain – indeed, where a client half-expects his own bank to rip him off – a strong bond between you and your account is paramount. Hence the fortunes spent on ‘entertaining’: the rugby matches and Grand Prix and golf tournaments, the lavish dinners and premiers crus and trips to Venice, the girls who appear at the door of your client’s hotel bedroom at 2 a.m. just in case he needs anything. Obviously, the system turned into a racket long ago; nowadays the best salesman is the one who can make his client believe that he is his friend in spite of the ostentatious gifts and luxuries he bears.