Arbitrage

by Colette Kebell

  Logan looked him straight in the eye, trying to match the face to a name.

  ‘Inspector Corrigan, Interpol. I arrested you during the investigations into Saunders’ murder,’ he stated.

  ‘A colossal fiasco. I was innocent, although it took about twenty years to prove it,’ said Logan. Price watched the bickering between the two in disbelief, but he didn’t say a word.

  ‘Where were you yesterday?’ asked Corrigan.

  ‘In the office. A row of meetings with clients, one after the other, you can check my diary.’

  ‘We will do so,’ Corrigan explained in detail the fate of Amelia Mortcombe and Logan’s face went from disbelief to shock. He did not cry, but it was evident that he was upset.

  ‘We need to figure out what Amelia was working on. Did she have any enemies?’

  Logan looked at Price for a moment, and then his gaze turned to his office, but then, biting his lips, he kept quiet.

  ‘Mr Logan, do you know if Amelia Mortcombe had any enemies?’ insisted Corrigan.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. We take care of the usual things, divorces, real estate, I don’t think anyone would go to the trouble of killing Amelia for things like that. However, my office is at your disposal, go ahead and search the premises, you have my full cooperation.’

  ‘Can we bring the documents to the police department?’ asked Blake.

  Logan thought about it, trying to remember if anything incriminating was contained in their paperwork and then nodded in assent. ‘Take what you need.’

  Then he slumped in a chair and began to stare at the empty space in front of him.

  While the officers were busy searching the premises, Price approached the old man and asked, ‘If I remember correctly, the firm is registered in Amelia’s name, right?’

  Logan replied without looking up from the floor, ‘Yes, both the company and the premises are in her name. There was the talk of splitting it fifty-fifty, but for one reason or another we never bothered to formalise the matter.’

  ‘Now all this belongs to my wife,’ said Price, hissing the words as if he were a snake, ‘when the police have gone, take your things and get out. Leave your keys with me, your services are no longer required.’

  ‘We still have cases to work on…’ Logan said.

  ‘I told you, this is none of your business anymore!’ cried Price, a couple of officers looked in their direction, ‘bugger off, old man. And screw the pending cases! It is no longer your problem, do you understand?’

  Logan did not answer but, resigned, nodded.

  ****

  When Price returned to his office, he was surprised he had received an email from Resurgence Equities Enterprise. They informed him about his investment, they’d attached a transactions log and said they had already moved the money into his account. At the end of the letter, they thanked him for doing business with the Resurgence Equities Enterprise.

  He opened the document on his computer and gasped reading the revenue column. Resulting from the one hundred and fifty thousand pounds invested he had received back two hundred and twenty thousand pounds. That’s impossible, he said to himself, someone is taking me for a ride.

  He opened the attachment and was gobsmacked by what the transaction log was telling him. There were pages and pages, one after the other, purchases and sales made at almost the same instant, earnings. Next to each line there was the date of the transaction, hour, minutes, and seconds. It didn’t specify the milliseconds, as explained by Anthony, but he clearly saw that hundreds of deals were made during the same second. How was it possible?

  He searched for a phone number in the corporate diary and called the IT Department. He knew they kept a log of all stock titles in the archive to do statistical analysis. He had personally approved the order to purchase additional servers and disks to store the data. The idea was to hold a stock historical archive to use for analytical purposes. He had also seen some presentations by computer giants that promised immediate analysis of large amounts of data to make decisions. Big Data, they called it. Often needed by supermarkets to analyse consumers’ profiles and understand what products were more popular and what were the most successful ones? Although sceptical, he had approved the budget, but still had yet to see the results.

  ‘Richard, I need a data analysis on the American stock exchanges. Yesterday’s data,’ said Price.

  ‘What did you have in mind exactly, Mr Price?’ said the computer engineer. The bespectacled young man who ran the database knew that data requests made to his office were often too general; the result was hours of work to provide answers that no one had ever asked. Figuring out exactly what people really wanted was winning half the battle.

  ‘I have an Excel spreadsheet that I’m sending you now. It contains US markets transactions from yesterday. They are sorted by the stock exchange. I want you to analyse the data and confirm their validity.’

  ‘You are unclear, Mr Price. If you already have the data, which kind of confirmation do you need? Wait a moment, please … I’ve just received the file … OK, I’ve opened it,’ said the technician.

  ‘Look at page three, those IBM titles. There are dozens of purchases at the same time at different prices. I cannot explain it.’

  The technician was silent for a few minutes, and then he said, ‘Maybe I understand. You are wondering why, at the same time, on the same stock exchange anyone could buy a stock at different prices,’ said the technician, trying to unravel his ideas in turn.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘From the log you sent me I see that it shows only the seconds, not the milliseconds. Maybe I’ve got it, give me a half hour, and I’ll call you back,’ said Richard.

  ‘If I am busy, try again until the phone is free. This is a priority!’

  There were always priorities, thought the poor technician. Every day there was something he had to do with the highest priority. He set to work immediately.

  Price picked up the phone and called Marcus Splinter.

  ‘Marcus, my friend.’

  The old swindler was sitting in an armchair and was sipping a cup of coffee. Around him, there were his accomplices, who remained in religious silence. ‘Robert, nice to hear you, how are things going?’

  ‘Very well. Did you get anything from the Resurgence Equities Enterprise?’

  ‘Actually, I haven’t checked it yet, wait a minute …’ Splinter pretended to press keys on a keyboard and then exclaimed, ‘Wow, that’s great. Three hundred and fifty thousand pounds for an investment I thought would give me ten per cent at most. What happened to yours?’

  ‘Two hundred and twenty,’ said Price through gritted teeth. He wasn’t pleased that his new acquaintance had gained more than him.

  ‘You did the right thing. In certain affairs it’s better to be cautious,’ said Splinter. The irony pervading his words was noticed by Price.

  ‘Have you looked into these Resurgence guys?’ Price then asked, as if it were something reasonable, a casual business discussion, while he was fully aware. Instead, he had found the goose that laid the golden egg.

  ‘I asked around a bit. The company looks legit, although almost everything is based on secrecy. No customer names, nothing much specific on their website. A friend in the States said they are making money hand over fist; they dealt with almost three per cent of all transactions on various stock markets in the past couple of months. Amazing, for a newcomer. No one has been able to get more information, but they’ve certainly noticed them. Are you thinking of having another go with these guys?’

  Price thought it over for a moment. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe they were lucky; as you said, it’s better to be cautious in certain things.’

  ‘You are right, my boy,’ said Splinter, ‘to be cautious. I’m going to see them this afternoon.’

  Price hung up the receiver without saying goodbye.

  The phone rang again, it was Richard from the IT Department.

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘All t
he operations are legitimate, I received a sample of transactions, I went through them to see what happened in those seconds and that’s something amazing. I mean, they take advantage of small price changes on the titles of the different stock exchanges. It seems they can sell on the market at the highest price while almost instantly they glean whatever share they can on other stock markets. Or anticipate, I do not know how bulk orders. They seem to have a magic wand: buy large amounts of securities a few moments before a big bank, or a fund manager make an order. And as soon as a big order lands on the market, they are ready to sell. It might be inside trading, except that they make thousands of trades a day. It wouldn’t be possible. If these guys have found the formula to take advantage of the arbitrage, they are getting seriously rich.’

  ‘Thank you, Richard,’ said Price hanging up the phone. So, it was true, how come nobody had done that before them? Then he remembered an article he had read some time ago, where the journalist had said that the big banks were losing market share, to the benefit of a small group of newcomers.

  There was no time to waste; he needed to have another meeting with those Resurgence guys. Letting Splinter have the upper hand was not an option; the next time he would be the one to be humiliated.

  CHAPTER 41

  That same day, Price booked an appointment with Hank Edwards to discuss a new investment.

  ‘There we are,’ said Hank as soon as he ended the conversation with Price, ‘the fish took the bait.’

  ‘You’ve given me the jitters,’ said Lenny turning to Splinter, ‘with all your cajoling on being cautious.’

  ‘Ah, it wasn’t so difficult,’ explained the older man. ‘Price is ambitious and competitive. He loves money more than his own children, and it was evident he was getting upset when I told him how much I’d invested. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to see the look on his face. And when I told him to be careful, that was the famous straw that broke the camel’s back. Telling a man that kind of thing is the equivalent of challenging him. It seems to me, all went for the best.’

  The band moved their operation to the Resurgence offices; Price could show up at any time.

  ‘What happened to Logan? We need to inform our new overseas associates about an incoming investment.’

  ‘He had things to do in his office,’ said Domino, ‘he should arrive any minute now.’

  ‘Was it necessary to bring him here?’ asked Hank. ‘If Price decides to make a surprise visit, he will suspect something.’

  They were interrupted by shouting from the lobby. The receptionist was raising her voice to someone and threatened to call the police. Just hearing the word police made all gang members jump up from their chairs in that elegant meeting room and run to see what was going on.

  Logan was right in the middle of the main lobby and screaming like a maniac. ‘Bastards! They took her from me!’

  ‘Sir, you’re drunk, if you don’t leave immediately, there will be trouble,’ said the blonde who had now left her post and was trying, in vain, to push Logan out the door.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ cried Domino from the top of the stairs, ‘I’ve got it.’ So saying she hurried to reach Logan. She could smell the alcohol from three meters away.

  ‘Ryan, what’s up?’

  ‘They took her from me,’ he said crying, ‘my baby girl!’

  ‘Come on, come on, come upstairs and tell me more,’ insisted the woman. Logan had always been a quiet and a soft-spoken man, addicted to work. No one had ever seen him in that condition, at least none of the gang had.

  ‘I’ll take this,’ said Domino removing a half-empty bottle of whisky from Logan’s hand. The stench of alcohol filled her nostrils. Then she held Logan under his arm in an attempt to lead him toward the elevator. Splinter tried to approach and help, but Domino froze him with a glare. They went into a room, and the woman helped Logan lie down on a bench, the man was reduced to a rag and continued to mumble meaningless phrases.

  The remaining gang members sat in the same office, waiting.

  ‘What happened, Ryan?’

  ‘She is dead, don’t you understand? They killed her like a dog!’

  ‘Whose been killed? I don’t understand?’

  ‘Amelia. They killed her, my poor daughter.’

  They looked at each other. Anders was petrified. Logan’s wrath unleashed against him. One moment Logan was lying on the couch and seemed to be in pain, but as soon as he saw the Swede, he lunged at him with all his might. ‘It was your fault, you filthy bastard! You left her alone and look what happened!’

  Logan grabbed Anders by the throat, but Lenny and Chaz stopped him in time, forcing him to stretch out on the couch. Then the man started sobbing like a child, invoking the name of the dead woman.

  A tear fell down Anders’ face.

  He knew that Amelia had been taking a significant risk, but she also seemed determined. He had left her on a train at Stratford-Upon-Avon and had waited until it set off. How had this happened?

  He thought back to Amelia’s offer, to take the money and run away; he thought back to the times they spent together when they had made love; his heart wrenched in his chest. He should have stayed with her. In that very moment, he realised how much he loved her, albeit only having known her for a short time, how he felt at ease with her, as had never happened to him before with anybody else in his life.

  He wanted to go back in time and say, ‘Amelia, let’s run away, from everything, just the two of us,’ but it was far too late for that.

  He would pay for that mistake with remorse, for a lifetime, if necessary.

  ‘That bastard should pay,’ said Anders.

  ‘Domino, keep Logan hidden in one of the offices until he recovers. And especially prevent him from doing anything stupid. Try to put him back together, tonight we will have to talk to his friends from overseas for new investment,’ said Splinter after he glimpsed at the computer. ‘Price has just forked over ten million pounds.’

  ****

  Inspector Corrigan was sitting in the car in front of the building of what appeared to be the Brighton branch of the Resurgence Equities Enterprise. They had stalked Splinter, and he and Chief Superintendent Ross were making assumptions about what the gang were doing.

  ‘From what I see, it’s a financial company,’ said Ross perusing the information on his mobile phone. ‘I don’t understand much of what they do. Looks like stock trading.’

  ‘They have been inside for a couple of hours now, what the hell are they doing?’

  They saw a drunken man staggering towards the building. He paused for a moment at fifty feet from them, just after the crossroad and then headed for the Resurgence Equities Enterprise offices.

  ‘Hey, that’s Ryan Logan,’ said Corrigan.

  ‘Are you sure about that? The one who is working in Amelia Mortcombe’s law firm?’ asked the surprised Chief Superintendent Ross.

  ‘Who worked there. After Amelia’s death, he was fired by Price, the brother-in-law.’

  ‘No wonder he started drinking. At that age, another job will be hard to find.’

  ‘The question is, what is he doing at Resurgence Equities Enterprise? Maybe is he working with Marcus Splinter and partners? We knew they wanted to rip her off, but we never found a connection. Now that appears to be Logan; in my opinion, he is the inside man.’

  Ross was puzzled for a moment and then said, ‘But now that Amelia Mortcombe is dead they don’t have any motivation to continue with a scam? They definitely haven’t killed her.’

  ‘This is also true. But then why don’t they dismantle everything and go? They must have some other target, although we still don’t know who it might be. I find it disturbing that Logan is involved with those thugs.’

  The traffic flowed slowly into the street. A bus stopped right in front of the building covering the visual of the two officers of the law.

  ‘What do we do? Are we going to see what they’re doing in there?’ asked Ross.

  ‘N
o, wait. We continue to follow them until we find out who their victim is. Then we act accordingly. Making a move now wouldn’t make any sense.’

  ****

  Igor Sokolov arrived at Mortcombe Bank at that same instant, asking to see Robert Price immediately. He was wearing an elegant grey, tailor-made suit and a red tie which gave him the appearance of a prominent businessman having just arrived in town. The receptionist, while awaiting Price’s arrival, kept looking in his direction. Sokolov was an attractive man, but with a hard and cruel countenance, the likes of which promised ecstatic nights and terrifying days. And he knew he had that effect on women, on any woman.

  He noticed it and smiled at the receptionist, who in turn looked away, guilty of being caught staring too intently.

  Price arrived a few minutes later and made him sit in his office.

  ‘Can I get you anything to drink?’ he asked hoping it was a courtesy visit, although in his heart he knew that Sokolov never made such things.

  ‘No thanks. We have a problem,’ said the Russian, who in the meantime had removed his wristwatch, starting to wind it with infinite slowness. ‘We are missing ten million from our accounts, money which we have not spent, and we don’t know where they ended up. The assistant who helped says that the money was moved by Bruno Mortcombe. We didn’t authorise him to do so, and of course, we want our money back. We need it because, as I told you, we are in the process of buying a company.’

  Price had done everything to mask the shortfall caused by Romanov, but if Sokolov had noticed, it was useless to deny it. He would go on a rampage. He poured a shot of whisky, he briefly tasted the peaty aroma and then sat at his desk.

  He sighed and began to tell all his problems, from the killing of Romanov until the disappearance of Margot.

  Sokolov listened in silence, continuing to wind his wristwatch. Price’s tension was mounting, which would he rather have, someone angry in front of him, even indignant about the choices he had to make. But the Russian remained silent, which what caused his legs to shake.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘No, there is more. I tried to retrieve the money, I swear. I found this American company that invests …’