The Mark and the Void

by Paul Murray

  ‘I don’t fucking know, do I? Maybe because no one any closer will let me care about them.’

  My phone lights up; I am grateful for the reprieve.

  The caller is a man – a reporter. ‘My name is Ron Hallissey, I work at the Record – Mr Martingale, your name has been given to me as one of the authors of a recent report on Royal Irish Bank compiled by Agron Torabundo for the Department of Finance. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘I just wondered if you could expand on some of the recommendations your report makes. You advise government to inject a further eight billion euro of direct liquidity to Royal Irish –’

  ‘I – what?’

  ‘I wondered, given the cuts that’ve already been made –’

  ‘Wait, I advise them to what?’

  ‘– to, for instance, palliative care, cervical cancer vaccinations, back-to-work schemes, rehousing for at-risk minorities – whether you had specific ideas where the next cuts should come from, in order to pay for this latest bailout –’

  ‘Wait, wait,’ I interrupt. ‘I didn’t recommend any bailout…’ I break off: someone’s tapping my shoulder. It’s Rachael’s secretary.

  ‘Can you come upstairs?’ she says.

  ‘I’m on a call,’ I tell her.

  She reaches over to the phone station and pulls the plug. The red light, and all the other lights, dwindle instantly into darkness. ‘It’s not actually a question,’ she says.

  * * *

  Rachael is standing in her office with her back to me, gazing out the window. ‘Sit down, Claude.’

  I do so. On her desk, festooned in red crêpe paper, is a bottle of Irish whiskey, with the government harp on the label.

  ‘The Minister’s office sent it over by way of thanks. They were extremely pleased with your work.’ She looks back at me over her shoulder. ‘Perhaps that surprises you.’

  ‘From the press conference it sounded as if they had ignored most of my suggestions.’

  ‘That’s because we rewrote them,’ she says.

  A gull swoops down to land outside her window; it scrutinizes the office with an eye the same livid corpse-green as the river below.

  ‘After speaking to you, Jurgen had some concerns about your report’s content, so before releasing it I called it up here and went through it with him. What the Department saw was the revised version.’

  ‘In which you advised them to continue the bailout?’

  ‘In which we advised that Royal Irish had a short-term liquidity issue, owing to the ongoing outflow of corporate deposits and overnight funding. Nasty, but fixable.’ She steps away from the window and takes her seat opposite me, regarding me impassively for what seems a very long time.

  ‘My figures were accurate,’ I say slowly. ‘The evidence is there. Royal is finished. No amount of money will fix it.’

  ‘So you advised it should be wound down and its bondholders go unpaid,’ she says.

  ‘Why should public money be used to pay off private business debts?’

  ‘And did you wonder at all who those bondholders could be?’

  ‘That did not seem pertinent.’

  ‘Claude,’ she says – at that moment, the secretary’s voice issues from the phone, and Rachael roars a single, terrifying ‘No!’ before returning affectlessly to me – ‘Claude, we have some extremely important clients who bought heavily into Royal Irish. How do you think they would feel if they discovered that we had advised the government to let the bank go down and their investment with it?’

  I begin to say that most of the original bondholders sold on at a loss some time ago, but she cuts me off. ‘No, Claude. I want you to think about this. What would our clients think if we were responsible for them losing millions of euros?’

  I clear my throat. ‘I take your point, but the Irish government is also our client.’

  ‘The Irish government commissioned a single report.’

  ‘Yes, but to avoid a conflict, surely best practice is to –’

  Rachael beats her fists on the desk. ‘I told you, Claude! The best outcomes for the key players, that’s what I asked you to find, can’t you read between the lines?’

  ‘But to pretend the bank is still alive, when clearly it is not –’

  ‘What is wrong with you people?’ she exclaims. Her eyes hold mine, as if she is genuinely seeking an answer; for a moment she looks terribly young, like a teacher at her wits’ end with an intractable group of infants. ‘Do you know what we are to a man like Porter Blankly, Claude? We’re nothing. We’re irrelevant. We’re a godforsaken rock in the middle of the ocean. If we sank under the waves tomorrow, he’d barely even notice. Now, I’ve been trying to change his mind. I’ve been trying to put this place on the map, prove to him that our office can be a serious contributor to the company. And then I have one of my analysts advising government to burn our biggest client?’

  She blinks at me as if inviting a response. But I have nothing to say. She takes a deep breath, unknots her fists and, in a more controlled voice, says, ‘Walter’s built up a 25 per cent stake in Royal Irish.’

  ‘Walter?’

  ‘Walter Corless. Dublex. When the share price started to fall, he took the opportunity to double down. Then he doubled down again – indirectly, through a broker, so nobody knew it was him.’ She pauses. ‘From your reaction I’m guessing it wasn’t your idea.’

  I’m speechless; in fact, my whole body has gone numb. At a certain level of success, it’s not unusual for major clients to imagine they achieved it all by themselves; they’ll dismiss their advisers, start making decisions led purely by their gut, keep going until their empires are in ruins. But Walter always seemed too smart for that; or rather, he seemed such a monster in every other regard that I assumed he must be possessed of a sterling business sense to balance it all out.

  ‘When your report came in I called our major clients on spec before submitting,’ Rachael says. ‘That’s when he told me.’

  ‘How could he even afford it? A quarter of a bank?’

  ‘It’s in CFDs. He only needed to put down the margin. But that means now the bank’s in trouble, his losses are amplified. It’s already been making loans to him to cover the margin calls. If the share price falls much further he’ll be wiped out.’ She locks her eyes on me again. ‘I don’t need to tell you that if Dublex went under, there would be major consequences for AgroBOT. Cash flow, legal – I don’t even want to think about it.’

  And that would be the tip of the iceberg, for us and for Ireland. Dublex employs thousands of people; whole towns are built around its operations. Its implosion would make the crash to date look like a day at the races.

  ‘The government can’t prop up Royal Irish indefinitely,’ I say. ‘There isn’t any money left.’

  ‘Not indefinitely,’ Rachael says. ‘I thought it might give us some time. Only now it appears someone in the Department of Finance has leaked the report to the press and they’re starting to ask questions.’

  ‘Yes, someone called me only a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Well, you can call him back and confirm that you stand by every word,’ she says. ‘After careful analysis of their accounts you concluded, blah blah blah.’ She swivels in her chair; her face is recast in the greenish light of the terminal, giving it a submarine chill. ‘Be thankful we got your report before it was sent, Claude. Otherwise we would be having a very different conversation. Take your gift.’ She points to the bottle of whiskey on the desk. ‘And send up Ish.’

  Ish isn’t at her desk: she has just left for a meeting in London and won’t be back until tomorrow. I think about texting to warn her of what’s in store, then decide she’s better not knowing. There is nothing she can do; at least this way she can get a good night’s sleep.

  Three more journalists call that afternoon, as well as the man from the Record. I do as I’m told, telling them that the report’s recommendations are sound, and that the question of how to pay for them was no
t part of my remit. By four o’clock, a picture of me taken at a conference two years ago appears on several news websites with the caption Martingale: Cold or Martingale: French. Later, a story runs in one of the tabloids with the headline Fat-Cat Banker Who Thinks We Haven’t Suffered Enough.

  ‘This fat-cat thing is such bullshit,’ Kevin opines. ‘Since when are bankers fat? We’re in the gym like every day.’

  ‘Criticize if you want, but at least be accurate,’ Jocelyn agrees.

  ‘When you think of what they could have said – you know, Crazy Frog Says, Let Them Eat Cake, that kind of thing.’

  ‘It’s just lazy journalism,’ Jocelyn says.

  Coincidentally, Walter calls too, in order to rant about some regulatory hold-up or other. I can’t concentrate on what he’s saying: it takes all of my restraint not to break in on him and bellow, ‘You told me you didn’t have a holding in Royal Irish! You told me!’ But maintaining these charades is what professionalism means; and anyway, when I investigate, I find that the arcane derivative he used to make the investment means that he didn’t actually own anything, but instead was making a kind of leveraged bet on shares held by a broker-dealer, so technically he was telling the truth.

  The market’s lending to the government, the government’s lending to Royal, Royal’s lending to Walter to cover Walter’s own stake in Royal, pulled ever-downwards by the market … I draw a diagram on a scrap of paper, trying to work it all out, but very quickly it turns into a self-devouring incomprehensibility, an uroboros of debt like the black twin of Ish’s kula ring …

  I ask Jurgen what will happen next.

  ‘Rachael is trying to persuade Walter to get rid of his holding, before the market finds out about it and the Royal Irish black hole becomes a much larger and more dangerous Royal Irish-Dublex black hole,’ Jurgen says. ‘The problem is that Walter is still under the impression that Royal is about to bounce back.’

  Magical thinking: an invaluable quality for an entrepreneur, until it isn’t. But Walter!

  Jurgen shrugs. ‘Walter is a person. People do irrational things. They act according to the story they want to hear, instead of the reality.’ He cocks his head, a mechanical bird. ‘Where is Ish?’

  I leave the office early. Ariadne waves to me from the window of the Ark. I remember she wanted to speak to me about her problems with the rent, but I feel contaminated after the Dublex revelation, so I just wave and pass on. At home I turn on the news, only to find myself faced, as though the broadcast were coming directly from my conscience, with the Minister again – haggard and worn, reciting the findings of the faked report like some poisonous spell whose consequences he has no conception of.

  When the phone rings, my first, dreadful thought is that the journalists have somehow got my mobile number. But this time the caller is Paul. William O’Hara has emailed him to confirm our place on the guest list for his public interview with Banerjee at the Black & White Festival. ‘It’s two weeks on Thursday,’ he says. ‘So time to get moving.’

  ‘Excellent,’ I say.

  ‘Excellent, so when are you coming over?’

  ‘You want me to come over?’

  ‘I thought you said you were going to help,’ Paul returns, a little sharply.

  ‘Yes, although I meant in the way of providing background detail, moral support, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh, I see, so basically you’re saying I have to do it all by myself.’

  ‘Aren’t novels usually written this way?’

  A sigh crackles from the receiver. ‘This isn’t a novel, Claude. It’s a proposal. I’ve got a few ideas, but I want to bounce them off someone first.’

  Bounce them off someone: the phrase reassures me. It suggests there will be little more required of me than a physical presence. I can be a presence; and a bout of artistic creativity might be just the kind of activity I need to purge the noxious taste of the day. I set out, trying not to think about Dublex and its shaky foundations, trying not to see in the streets and faces I encounter a reality that has been secretly changed, the first imperceptible marks of a new and lessened future; I concentrate instead on novelistic details: fruit stacked in the grocery, the stooped old woman casting breadcrumbs to the pigeons, a convoy of robed priests climbing aboard a bus.

  The rain has been falling all day; it seems a whole sea must have spilled from the sky. The swollen river lours like a drunkard disturbed from his sleep; clogged gutters quickly become filthy lakes, over which pedestrians skip and dance and hop with grim grey faces, as in some totalitarian musical. On Paul’s street the weather has driven almost everyone indoors, though a couple of men make do with a sheet of polyurethane beneath which they share a dog-end, like doughty Tommies in a Passchendaele trench.

  Paul, when he answers his door, has a twitchy demeanour I haven’t seen before. ‘Let’s get to it,’ he says. ‘Clizia’s going out in a minute, so we’ll have a couple of hours totally free.’

  ‘Volleyball?’

  ‘Yes, they’re in the quarter-finals. Nearly there, eh?’

  ‘Good for them,’ I say ingenuously, while a surge of rain strikes the window in a mocking minor chord.

  ‘Okay, down to business,’ he says, directing me to sit at the kitchen table.

  Instantly, Remington detaches himself from the television.

  ‘What are you doing, Daddy?’

  ‘We’re writing a story,’ Paul says. ‘Now be quiet.’

  ‘Is it a story about an ant?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it a story about an ant who goes all around the world and then he comes back and he lives in a matchbox and his name is Roland?’

  ‘Go and watch your cartoons,’ Paul says, gripping the boy by the shoulders and shunting him back towards television. ‘That’s an order.’

  With a little sigh, Remington picks up the remote; a torrent of explosions, strobes and rainbows fragmenting into hissing diamonds blasts from the TV, like ECT with product placement.

  ‘Okay. Okay.’ Paul seems considerably tenser than usual. He picks up a plastic biro, chews the end, then sets it down again. ‘The thing is,’ he says, ‘I don’t think this is going to work.’

  Clearly my role here is going to be more involved than I’d expected. ‘It’s just a proposal,’ I tell him in a calming voice. ‘And you already have most of it, in what you told Dodson at the party.’

  ‘But that’s just it, Claude.’ He looks up at me with eyes that are flashing vortices of anxiety. ‘Anal Analyst. What is that? You know?’

  ‘Well, it is just as you said, a working title. Obviously you will not use Anal in the actual book.’

  He shakes his head vigorously. ‘Anal ’s not the issue. Anal is fine. The problem is Analyst. Who wants to read about an analyst? Who knows what an analyst even is?’

  ‘I know what an analyst is. I can tell you.’

  ‘You’ve already told me. You’ve told me what you do ten times, and I forget it straight away. It’s like it’s too boring to be retained by the human mind.’

  ‘Can’t you make it interesting? Isn’t that your job?’

  ‘Within reason. But I need some kind of story. I need something to happen. Today, for example, tell me what you did today.’

  I flinch inwardly. His eyes fix on me, enormous, gibbous, like the eyes of some nocturnal animal peering out of the forest; in them, as if from a hidden camera, I see myself at Rachael’s desk, promising to lie about the phoney report … ‘I developed a financial model of a notional amalgam of the three main Irish banks,’ I say.

  ‘That’s what I mean! No one wants to read about some guy going around developing financial models.’

  ‘Dodson wanted to. He said it sounded bold.’

  ‘Bold is code for no one’s going to buy that. Look, I’ve made my decision, the analyst’s out. So what we’re left with is Anal. Igor and I talked through a few ideas earlier today. See if anything jumps out at you.’ Placing a pair of reading glasses on his nose, he frowns down at th
e notebook. ‘Anal Amateurs. The comic tale of two medical students as they attempt to raise the money for college by opening their own unorthodox proctology clinic. Eighteen and Anal. The battle of an uptight young man to shake off his authoritarian upbringing. Twenty-Four-Hour Red-Hot Anal. In Finland, the land of the midnight sun, a local blacksmith’s decision to open a colonic irrigation centre causes tension in the old community –’

  ‘I will be honest, I think you are going down the wrong path with these anal themes.’

  ‘But we told Dodson that it was called Anal Analyst,’ Paul remonstrates. ‘That’s the idea he wanted to hear about. We’ve already scrapped the analyst. If we chuck Anal too, what’s left? You want me to hand him a pile of blank pages? Publishers won’t pay money for blank pages, Claude. I’ve tried it and they won’t.’

  Before I can reply (what can I possibly say?) the bathroom door flies open; like a goddess emerging from a volcano, Clizia steps out in a billow of steam. She is wearing boots of white patent leather that climb up above her knee, leaving perhaps twelve scandalous inches of thigh exposed between them and the hem of her mini-skirt, which is also white and also patent leather. ‘I am going to volleyball,’ she says deadpan, but then, raising her voice abruptly, ‘Vot is this?’

  ‘What’s what?’ Paul turns to follow her pointing finger. ‘Oh, for God’s sake – Remington, what’s in your mouth?’

  ‘Uh-igh,’ comes the unconvincing reply.

  ‘Is that the plug from the TV?’

  ‘I was trying to make myself electric,’ Remington explains in a small voice.

  ‘Can’t you even take care of him for five minutes?’ Clizia rails. ‘How can I go out, if I can’t trust you to watch him?’

  ‘He was chewing a plug, that’s all,’ Paul protests. ‘It’s not like he had his fingers in the socket.’

  ‘Is like the less you do, the lazier you get,’ she says.

  ‘You’ll be late for your game,’ he says shortly.

  ‘Huh,’ she says. She goes to the door, where, rather desultorily, she slings over her shoulder the worn nylon sports bag. ‘I am leaving,’ she says.