Trader Jack -The Story of Jack Miner (The Story of Jack Miner Series)

by Neil Behrmann

  'Red means losses,' explained Drummond. 'Bad market. Bearish.'

  'I've worked that out,' I said. I had read Bill's stock exchange book on the train. I knew that the bears were the sellers and the bulls, buyers.

  Jim looked at Drummond and Khosler and began: 'All potential clients should be taken seriously. Let me tell you a story. A long time ago, when I started in this business, a man walked into our office.

  'He was Asian with a long white beard, tattered kaftan and stained white skullcap. Our secretary tried to turn him out, but before she could do so, he slammed a bag on to her desk. He tipped the bag and dumped bundles of dirty notes and coins. There was such a large heap that some of the cash fell on the floor.

  'When we'd finished counting the cash our hands were black. The pile came to more than a hundred thousand. We chose a selection of shares. My boss came back from a long lunch. That's how it was in those days. He told us that Mr Sutie was one of his richest clients. The shares eventually made Sutie another million.'

  'Can't do that now. Guys like that could be terrorists laundering money,' said Drummond. 'We must contact the companies. Make sure this young man is a bona fide registered shareholder.'

  'Come on David, give us a break,' said Shri.

  'Who are your guardians? Is there a trust? Any brothers or sisters?' insisted Drummond.

  'No guardian. No brothers and sisters.'

  Shri picked up a remote control and switched on a TV behind us. He groaned when he saw the cricket score.

  'Oh no! England a hundred and thirty for six!'

  'Who's taken the wickets?' I asked.

  'That West Australian fast bowler, Mike Swann.'

  I moved closer to the TV. Swann was bowling. He was big, about six foot four, tanned and lean with broad shoulders. Close up, he looked a bit like Sandy. The same brown hair. He was very fast, sometimes pitching the ball right up, others bumpers. England's batsmen were ducking and weaving, but some of the balls reared up and hit them.

  'Swann is a cousin of my friend. She's also from Perth,' I said.

  'That's it! Proof! He's no terrorist, David,' laughed Wardle. 'Come with me Jack.'

  We went into his small office where I showed him Dad's letter. I decided that I had better be straight and told him about the bankruptcy and Baton.

  'Liquidators! Know all about them. If you're on the company register, don't worry. We'll check with Bank Goede that you're the shareholder,' said Wardle.

  'How long will it take.'

  'Since the bank is in Amsterdam, it could take a few days. Maybe by Tuesday or Wednesday. But that should be a formality. If you wish, we'll be your brokers.'

  I looked at his terminal screen: 'What's the price of OilFinder and MineDeep?'

  'OilFinder is Britain's biggest oil company, a wonderful company. Don't sell it at 600 pence. It's cheap.'

  'And MineDeep?'

  'It's dropped 50 pence to £1300 in the past few days. It's one of the biggest mining business in the world, produces copper, aluminium, gold even diamonds. Don't sell!'

  I calculated that at those prices the shares were worth £10,100.

  'Can I sell now, they're going down?'

  'Think about it. It's only two years since 9/11 and now this Russian bank failure. The market downturn has nothing to do with OilFinder and MineDeep . . . They're blue chips . . . Top companies,' said Wardle. 'See you on Tuesday. Enjoy your weekend'.

  I watched the cricket for a bit. Swann had taken five wickets. England were almost out. Made only 160 runs and were bound to lose. I was just going through the door, when I had a strange feeling; a sort of premonition and turned around. Wardle was talking to his secretary.

  'If it's OK Mr Wardle, can I sell them today?'

  'They're your shares, Jack, you can do what you want.'

  'Great. Please sell all the shares now.'

  'We should first check with the companies that he's the shareholder,' said Drummond.

  'I'm sure he is,' said Wardle. 'If he wants to sell now, let him sell. Where can we reach you, Jack?'

  'I'll come in on Tuesday or Wednesday,' I said and walked out feeling important.

  It was Friday and with £165 in my pocket, I could buy a ticket for the cricket test and try to meet Mike Swann. Maybe he could tell me where I could find Sandy. Jazz and I continued walking down the hill until we reached the Heath. We then broke out into a run past some ponds and up a steep hill. It was a clear day and at the top, there was an amazing view of the centre of London several miles away.

  A map on a copper plate showed me what I was seeing. My marker in the far distance was the round dome of St Paul's Cathedral. Further south was Canary Wharf, the highest building. In front of Canary Wharf to the east, were the buildings of the City, the financial centre. The tallest were Natwest Tower and a building that looked like a gherkin. Further to the right towards the west, I could make out the Houses of Parliament and the Post Office Tower. London, my future, was in front of me.

  5 - DOWN AND OUT

  Back in central London, I found the YMCA. It was in Tottenham Court Road and was full. I had to find somewhere else to sleep. The road had loads of mobile phone and computer shops. I walked into one, bought some credit for my mobile, surfed some sites and played a few games until they kicked me out. Jazz who had waited outside patiently with his tail down, was happy again when we walked towards Oxford Street. A Burger King was on the other side of the road. Jazz, tugging at his lead, pulled me down some stairs into a smelly dark subway. Some guys were huddled up against a wall filled with graffiti. They were under dirty blankets and cardboard boxes.

  'Pound for a cup of tea,' one of them pleaded. I put 50 pence in his cap.

  A mongrel snarled at Jazz and went for him. The owner, pale, eyes dull from drugs and with bandages on his arms, didn't take any notice. I pulled back Jazz to avoid a fight.

  We hurried upstairs to Burger King. I managed to push Jazz under the table before anyone saw him, tied him up and went to the loo. It was fairly clean, given the amount of people who used it each day. After washing my hands and face, I bought two burgers, chips and a coke and got some water for Jazz. We were eating our food when I noticed two girls, a couple of tables away. They were drinking water. The younger one was skinny with dark circles under her eyes. She had greasy brown hair tied back in a scrunchie. She looked as if she hadn't eaten for days. She came up and patted Jazz. He wagged his tail.

  'He look like my dog,' she said in a heavy accent.

  'Is your dog outside?'

  'No, at home. Moscow.'

  The older girl, also looking weak and tired, joined her, stroked Jazz and helped him drink his water from the paper cup. She was more curvy with bigger breasts and short black spikey hair. Both wore dirty T-shirts and stained tracksuit bottoms. Jazz was enjoying the attention, but I had to push him back under the table. Luckily a guy cleaning the tables, didn't notice the dog or chose to ignore him.

  'Where you from?' asked the older girl, also in a Russian accent. She looked about nineteen and her friend a couple of years younger.

  'North England. Are you also from Moscow?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why don't you sit down?' I suggested, putting the Burger King boxes in the bin. 'I'm Jack.'

  'Me Sasha. She Natasha,' said the older girl. 'We cousins.'

  They sat down, their eyes on a couple enjoying their hamburgers.

  'Hungry?'

  They nodded their heads.

  'Hamburger? Milkshake?'

  'Thank you. You good to us,' said Natasha, her stained top covering small breasts with no bra.

  Leaving Jazz with them, I stood in the queue, bought hamburgers, chips, a strawberry and chocolate milkshake and a coke. It was getting crowded around the till. Two guys and a girl kept pushing and shuffling against me.

  Back at the table, Sasha and Natasha gulped down their food and milkshakes. The chocolate milkshake looked good, so I thought I would get one. I went back to the counter and felt my pockets fo
r money. Couldn't feel any notes. I stepped back from the queue. The money was gone. I had forgotten to put the notes in my inside jacket pocket. Must have been the people who had shoved and pushed me. They stole the money from my back pocket. My mobile was gone too.

  Panicking, I rushed to the table, grabbed Jazz's lead and sprinted into the street. Didn't recognise anyone from the queue. We ran down into the subway. Not there! By now the girls were also helping me search for the thieves. Waste of time. I frantically searched through my jacket, shirt and pants, shaking the James Manson and London guidebooks again and again. The notes were gone, £150, gone! Just a few coins. I counted them. £9.83. I still had to pick up my backpack and sleeping bag at King's Cross station. That would cost me five pounds. I had almost nothing for the weekend and I couldn't collect from the brokers until Tuesday or Wednesday. I didn't know what to do.

  'We know place to sleep. You want come?' asked Natasha.

  'I have no money. Just this,' I said, showing her the coins.

  'No problem,' said Sasha. 'You good to us. We help you.'

  'Strong man and dog protect us,' laughed Natasha.

  'You must be joking,' I said, as they stroked Jazz. 'What you doing in London?'

  'We finish school in Moscow. We must learn good English. Helps get good job,' said Sasha. 'Me want to join police. They looking for people who speak Russian and East European languages.'

  'Policewoman? Interpreter? But . . . but, how?' I asked, observing her dirty top and hair. 'You can't apply looking like . . .What happened to your money?'

  'We come visit friend. Stay with friend. But friend gone.'

  'When did you come?'

  'Tuesday. We meet man. He says he has room for us. We go into house. Room empty. We like it. Give him money for rent. He gives us key. We go get our things and come back, but key doesn't fit,' said Sasha shaking her head.

  'We can't get into house. We wait for man. He doesn't come. Other people arrive and open door. Don't know man. Never seen him. We go up to room. Key doesn't fit. Can't get in. We wait and wait but man doesn't return,' said Natasha.

  Bigger idiots than me, I thought. Now they were homeless, sleeping on the streets. I would have to do the same.

  'I'm going to King's Cross to pick up my baggage,' I said.

  'King's Cross bad place. Bad girls,' said Sasha.

  'We meet you here,' she said, showing me a piece of paper with Lincoln's Inn Fields written on it. 'Van comes. Gives us soup, bread.'

  I looked up Lincoln's Inn Fields on the map. It didn't seem that far away from King's Cross. They picked up their bags and walked with me past the bookshops in Charing Cross Road and into Covent Garden. Then we split up.

  * * *

  King's Cross to Lincoln's Inn was much further than I had thought. It was a long hard walk. Luckily the map I had was OK and it was still light when Jazz and I arrived there. Eighteenth century houses surrounded a large square with a garden and tennis courts. I searched for Sasha and Natasha and saw them waving to me from a queue near the iron gratings of a large grey building at the end of the square. A van arrived and a man and a woman in white coats handed out soup in paper cups and some bread, butter and jam.

  Just before the gates were locked, we sneaked into the park, went to the toilet and hid in some bushes. When it was dark, we laid out our bags between the bushes. Jazz slept between us. Luckily it didn't rain that night and we were soon asleep.

  I was dreaming when I suddenly felt someone prodding me. Two cops were shining their torches in our faces. They told us to move on.

  We quickly packed up our stuff and left the park.

  'I know place,' said Sasha.

  It was around midnight and bleary-eyed we trudged across Waterloo Bridge, the Thames below us. St Paul's Cathedral and City buildings were on our left, Houses of Parliament and the Big Wheel, on our right. We were so tired that London's tourist sites didn't impress us. All we wanted to do was put down our bags and sleep. We walked in silence towards the south bank of the river. It began to drizzle so we raced to some stairs, down to the river. A man was huddled under a blanket, his open cap next to him. If I didn't get a job this weekend, I would have to do the same. Sasha led the way along a wide pedestrian pathway. Then into the sheltered open space under Queen Elizabeth Hall.

  * * *

  That's how I came to be there and saw the poor guy hanging from the bridge. How I escaped the murderers.

  I avoided the police and didn't know whether they had my things. No way was I going to let them talk to me. My DNA was on that rope. They might think that I did it. Fortunately my passport and other documents were at Wardle & Co. It was time to move on. I had to get a job and get out of London. Go to the seaside. Brighton, perhaps.

  * * *

  It was Saturday morning and I wandered over to Oxford Street and walked into a shop that sold cameras and TV's. The cricket was on. Australia were one hundred and thirty for one; their batsmen hammering our bowlers. I watched for a while, hoping that I would spot Sandy in the crowd.

  The shop had no vacancies and others didn't want me either. Jazz pulled at the lead as we turned into Regent Street on the way to Regent's Park. It was sunny and hot. In the park we came across a duck pond next to a rose garden in full bloom; a fusion of dark and bright red, yellow, pink and white colours. I sniffed their scent and remembered the funeral. It was only a few days before, but it seemed much longer. I lay on my back under a tree and fell asleep, Jazz beside me.

  The dream was bad. I woke up with a jolt, feeling my neck and remembered them. Would they recognise me, the only witness? It was 6pm in the evening. We had been there for hours. I had to get away, far away, but there wasn't enough money.

  I walked further north through the fields and playing grounds of Regent's Park, the dog running and sniffing ahead of me. There was a drought and the grass was brown. At a café, not far from London Zoo, I went into the toilets, washed myself and looked at myself in the mirror. I badly needed a bath and my clothes were dirty. Hungry, so hungry, but didn't even have enough money to buy a sandwich. A biscuit would have to do. Lucky! An unopened ham sandwich pack in the bin. One sandwich for me, the other for my tired dog.

  In the distance I could hear a crowd cheering. We walked towards the noise. By the time we arrived at Lord's Cricket Ground, the crowd was coming through the gates. I still had this crazy idea. Would meet Mike Swann and find out where Sandy was staying.

  There was a long queue at one of the gates. Play was finished for the day and it was puzzling why people were queuing.

  'What's the score,' I asked a guy at the end of the queue. He looked about forty. He was unshaven and his black denim jacket was faded and torn.

  'Don't understand,' he said in a thick foreign accent. 'We come clean ground.'

  I went up to an official who was wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket.

  'Can I have a job?'

  'Stand in the queue, it's five pounds an hour.'

  Most of the cleaners seemed to be from Africa and Eastern Europe. Few were speaking English. There were about eighty of us, waiting. Spectators were still coming out of the ground. They hardly gave us a glance. When they did, they quickly turned their eyes away. I was one of the invisible people, the people who clean the streets and public toilets. The people who aren't people.

  I was near the back of the queue and was glad that they chose me. Others who came later were rejected. Eventually the line began moving. Security officials searched our bags and bodies. They then passed us black bags, divided us into groups and sent us to different stands. I asked an official if I could tie up Jazz inside the ground. Luckily he agreed.

  Dad was keen on cricket and we often watched games together on TV. Football was my favourite sport, but in the summer I played and watched cricket. It was strange being at Lord's for the first time alongside immigrants and asylum seekers who didn't have a clue about the game. Lord's is the Mecca of cricket. The ground is more than a hundred years old. When England plays Australi
a, Lord's is bursting with almost 30,000 spectators. Cricketers in England, Australia, India, Pakistan, South Africa, West Indies, Sri Lanka and New Zealand dream of playing at Lord's. Dad once tried to explain cricket to an American. He couldn't work out why a Test Match went on for five days and that sometimes it ended in a draw. Recently they introduced Twenty/20 cricket, a fast, compressed version of the game that finishes in three hours with a result. They are going to stage games in the US hoping that cricket will catch on there, but it can't compete with baseball.

  For us cleaners it was just work. Picking up rubbish and empty bottles on a stand named after Dennis Compton, a famous cricketer. Directly above the stand was a white building that looked like a rectangular space ship. This was the centre for TV, radio commentators and the press. Through the darkish windows, a few reporters were typing their stories on laptops.

  Across the green field, directly opposite my stand, I spotted the famous Lord's Pavilion, a Victorian building more than a hundred years old. Above the Pavilion in the players' dressing rooms and balconies were the English and Australian teams. I attempted to climb over the fence and run across the field to the dressing rooms to find Mike Swann, but a security guard stopped me. That stymied my chances of making contact with Sandy's cousin; made me feel gloomy. No chance of seeing her again.

  The scoreboard in the corner of the ground showed that Australia was almost two hundred runs ahead of England. Our side was likely to lose. It was a hot day and the crowd had drunk a lot. We worked silently along the rows of seats throwing empty bottles and cans into recycling bags and rubbish into others. I found some wrapped sandwiches that hadn't been touched and put them in a supermarket bag. That would be supper.

  We finished just after 8.30pm, but since it was only weeks after midsummer, the light was only then beginning to fade. They paid me ten pounds. That would keep me going for a while.

  * * *