‘Karen, when was the last time Daniel was in here?’
‘Months ago. I don’t know. September?’ Still kneeling, she studies the files that now lie open on the floor all around her. ‘That was the last dummy run through the new system.’
‘Did he ever ask for your key?’
‘No.’ She looks up. ‘Do you want me to recheck his personal account too?’
I take a moment with that; then I nod.
10
R
yan steps from Vance’s office into the corridor just ahead of me. He's so wrapped up in himself that he doesn’t notice that he isn’t alone.
‘Inspector?’
He lifts his head, and without prelude says, ‘I’ve seen your wife. I’ll catch up with you later.’ He disappears away toward the lifts.
Vance’s door is still ajar, and I slide my knuckles over it and enter to find him seated at his desk, staring into space.
‘I just saw Ryan,’ I say.
Coming back to himself, Vance shoots me a warning look. Apparently, more bruises have been raised at this latest encounter. From what I can gather, Ryan hasn’t been satisfied with the answers he’s been getting from Stephen. That's why Ryan keeps going away then coming back for another round of questions.
After giving Ryan my alibi for Wednesday night — I slept over at my father’s — I seem to have slipped down the list of suspects. But Stephen has no alibi: he was working late here at the office alone. The office is fifteen minutes’ stroll from St Paul’s Walk. And Vance and Daniel, as the whole bank knows, did not get along.
As I pull up a chair, Vance gives me the new Parnells numbers from the top of his head; but I have the impression his mind’s elsewhere. While he talks, I browse through the faxes on his desk. There’s one from McKinnon, he has accepted the Meyers’ final offer. Vance picks up another loose page from his desk and hands it across.
It’s a memo from Henry Wardell about the bond issue we placed for CTL last week. Everyone thought we'd have no trouble getting the issue away in the market, but instead we’ve been left with half the underwritten amount still on our books. Going by Henry’s figures, our probable trading loss will be bigger than our fee. Bad news.
‘The last I heard, we were going to be beating the bids off with a stick.’
‘So Daniel said.’ Vance points to Henry’s gloomy assessment. ‘Henry appears to have other ideas.’
One more headache to add to the catalogue, but by no means the worst of them. I put the memo aside and ask Vance if he’s heard from the Pamells board.
‘Not directly.’
He digs among the faxes then hands me the longest, from Leicester and Partners. They send us one of these each evening: a copy of everything they’ve managed to get into the papers during the day, and a list of puffs in the electronic media. Vance has circled the relevant section in red. The late edition of today’s Evening Standard carries a quote from Richard Parnell in response to the Meyers’ final offer: Parnell says that he presumes the bid of 180 is a joke.
‘More of the same,’ Vance comments. ‘Richard Parnell’s going to fight it. Price isn’t the issue with him, he wants the family silver kept intact.’
‘The rest of the family?’
‘Not taking our calls. Everything's being filtered through to them by Sandersons.’
The Parnells Board is packed with members of the Parnell family, their solidarity’s been a thorn in our side all along. If we could drive a wedge between them, convince even one of them that 180 is a good price, the defence would probably collapse. But so far we haven’t even come close.
‘Haywood’s had an idea,’ Vance says. After pairing Haywood and Cawley on the bid, he’s been watching over them like a father. ‘He thinks he can get to Ian Parnell. Apparently Ian hunts with the Heythrop. Haywood thought he might take a day with them himself tomorrow.’
I turn this one over. At worst, Haywood will get in a good day’s hunting for his trouble: no doubt he has thought of that.
‘Okay. But tell him not to make any promises. Just keep it all within the terms of the bid.’
Vance makes a note. He seems tired. There’s a knock at the door; it is Mannetti.
‘Raef. Got a moment?’
Setting the Leicester fax aside, I ask him what’s up. He glances at Stephen.
‘About some possible withdrawals,’ he says.
Vance offers to leave but I gesture for him to stay.
‘Piedmont and Trumpton-Cave,’ Mannetti tells us. ‘I’ve just heard they’re lining up beauty parades. Word is, they want to withdraw the lot.’
Vance groans.
Piedmont and Trumpton-Cave are two of our five biggest clients up in Fund Management. We run both their pension fund portfolios, and sundry other investments, for which we receive an annual fee and a share of the profits. Ideal customers. My father has the respective chairmen down to a shoot at Boddington once a year, we keep their pension fund returns in line with the market, and everybody, until now, remains happy. But if they’re lining up beauty parades — inviting submissions from other City institutions which want to manage their funds — they must be seriously thinking of leaving us. And if they take everything it will knock a gaping hole in our own Fund Management revenues. Mannetti regards me steadily.
‘How soon?’ I ask.
‘A week. A month.’ He shrugs. ‘Tomorrow? They can pull out when they like.’
Turning, I glance at Stephen. He doodles glumly on his pad.
‘Thanks, Tony. If you hear any more, let me know.’
Once Mannetti’s gone, Vance looks up. ‘Your father?’
‘I’ll see what he can do.’
We are silent a few seconds, pensive: this is really not good news. Now seems like the appropriate downbeat moment to mention that other matter.
‘I was upstairs, earlier. With Karen.’
‘Oh?’ He replaces the fax on the pile.
‘She seemed a bit upset. You know what she’s like, Stephen. It might be an idea to keep out of her way for a while.’
He regards me coolly. The shutters are up. This isn’t territory into which I’d normally stray, but the relationship between these two also affects the bank. ‘She asked me to ban you from the floor.’
‘She what?’
‘I told her there was no chance. But that doesn’t mean you should race straight up there just to prove a point. Okay?’
After ‘some consideration, he inclines his head. A thought occurs to me.
‘Do you ever go into the filing room?’
‘Why?’
‘It’s a simple question Stephen.’
‘To which the answer is, no,’ he says. ‘And whose question was that? Yours, or Ryan’s?’
It hadn’t crossed my mind till now, but Ryan’s investigation is probably providing useful cover for my own. Small comfort.
‘What about Daniel? Do you know if he went up there?’
Vance flicks through his diary. 'Be serious, Raef. He didn’t report to me, he reported to you. And to tell you the truth, I’ve had enough of this cat-and- mouse already from Ryan.’
‘He’s doing his job.’
‘Well I’m trying to do mine.’ Vance flips his diary shut. ‘Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.’
In the face of his evident displeasure, my resolve to maintain suspicion on all fronts suddenly crumbles. Old habits, it seems, are the strongest. He puts on his glasses and sorts through the faxes again. I assure him, protégé to mentor, that I’ll try to help him wherever I can.
11
‘P
ea and ham,’ says my father, emptying the contents of the can into the saucepan.
The maid is off sick, and Mary Needham is busy with one of her committees. As I explain what’s been happening at the bank, my father stirs the soup carefully. It is do-it-yourself night in St James’s. I am in charge of the toaster.
‘Lyle couldn’t have been more unpleasant if he’d tried.’
‘Nature of the beast,’ my father comments. He brings the saucepan across and pours the soup into our bowls. I butter the toast.
‘That pair from the DTI weren’t just pointed in our direction,’ I tell him. ‘They were shoved.’
He says that he will speak to the President of the Board of Trade.
‘A word in Whitehall might be better.’
He raises his eyes. ‘Penfield’s heard I presume. This DTI visit?’
I push my spoon through the soup. Penfield’s second call came through at five thirty. He was, as I expected, almost speechless with rage: the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England does not take kindly to being kept in the dark. But he seems to have decided that the DTI are the real culprits of the piece, so I caught only the blistering edge of his wrath. But I know now that all those stories about his temper weren’t exaggerated. Tomorrow does not promise to be the best day of Mr Skinner’s year. Penfield also asked to see what Hugh and I have uncovered so far. I explain this to my father too.
‘And is there anything?’
‘Nothing concrete. Hugh thinks he’s found a few deals we should look into.’ I omit to mention that Hugh has washed his hands of the whole affair after discovering the Odin deal; my father and I have been down that road one too many times already.
‘If you need some help,’ he suggests, ‘you can always ask John.’
I stress yet again that no one at the bank should know, not even Sir John.
‘Gifford’s asked us for lunch tomorrow,’ he says. I look up. I have a sense that something is being withheld. And when I say that I can't make it, my father wonders aloud if Charles Aldridge might come. Nothing important, he says. Then he brings the saucepan over and refills our bowls.
Sitting here in my father’s kitchen, grinding pepper into the pea and ham soup, it is hard to recapture that momentary impression of pure menace of that moment when Mannetti threatened Skinner. But it did happen. The threat was real.
‘If Gifford can let us know any more about Mannettfs record at American Pacific, I’d like to hear it.’ And then I ask a question I should have asked a long time ago. ‘If Mannetti’s so good, why did Gifford let us have him so easily?’
My father recites the argument: Gifford couldn’t afford to have the Funds Management joint venture with us fail; there had to be someone he trusted involved, someone with a real track record. My father dabs at his lips then puts down his napkin. ‘We went through this at the time, Raef.’
Yes, I think; but at the time we hadn’t seen Mannetti in action.
‘Are you saying he’s not quite as good as we imagined? As we hoped?’
It is worse than that. I am thinking that Carltons might have been used as a dumping ground. Did Gifford use the opportunity of our joint venture to offload a troublesome senior employee onto us? So I reiterate my request that it might be useful to hear from Giifford if there were any problems with Mannetti back in New York.
My father clearly thinks it will be a waste of time, but he agrees to do as I have asked. ‘I really do believe,’ he adds, ‘that John has a right to know about this fraud business.’
Old age, is this how it happens? This reversion to a subject we've already discussed has become an unwelcome but familiar pattern. When I mentioned it to Theresa last year she said that my father was simply tired, that I was worrying without reason. But since then the pattern has hardened; until now the signs are there for anyone who wishes to read them. In the person of my father, dotage has begun its slow encroachment upon wisdom.
I put our bowls in the dishwasher and rinse the saucepan in the sink. Moving around the kitchen, I run through the arguments again, making sure he understands why Sir John cannot be told.
‘It has to be like that,’ I conclude, drying my hands. ‘If we tell Sir John, why not Vance? If we tell Vance, why not the senior traders?’
‘But John,’ he says.
I hang the tea-towel on the rack and face him. My father is old, but not foolish; he knows we have to draw the line somewhere.
‘You’re right,’ he concedes at last. ‘Those deals you mentioned, the ones Hugh turned up?’ Here it comes, what I’ve been waiting for: those deals, as he knows, might be lethal. ‘Were they’ — he searches for the appropriately guarded phrase - ‘were they of any real size?’ What he wants to know, and can’t bring himself to ask, is whether Carlton Brothers is set to go the way of Barings. After so many generations of prosperity, is one torpedo going to send us down? The weight of this possibility is actually bowing his shoulders.
‘They’re not that big. And they’re not hidden trades, they’re just losses we shouldn’t have taken. We can ride it out.’
‘How big?’
‘We can’t be sure.’ He doesn’t accept that. He watches me and waits. ‘Probably less than ten million,’ I say.
‘Dollars?’
‘Pounds.’
He sinks back into his chair and closes his eyes. Relief. The financial loss would have hurt, no doubt, but the shame could have finished him.
‘That’s only a guess,’I warn him quickly. ‘And the size of the loss won’t stop Penfield from barging in on Friday. We’re not out of the woods yet. Not by a long way.’
He puts his elbows on the table. ‘Ten,’ he murmurs.
I go out to the drinks cabinet and pour two whiskies. When I return to the kitchen he hasn’t moved, he’s still seated at the table, one hand to his forehead. He takes his drink gratefully and we sit in silence awhile. He looks like my grandfather. He never used to, but age has chiselled out the deep family lines. To divert his thoughts, I tell him about our progress with Parnells, but it takes some minutes before he finally seems to listen. Gradually the shock of relief passes.
When I mention that Vance is sending Haywood out with the Heythrop, he cocks his head, the first sign of any interest he’s shown. It seems I have reminded him of something.
‘The meet on Saturday down at Boddington. I hope you’re not going to cry off on me Raef.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘Good. Don’t let Theresa back out either.’
Saturday with Theresa at Boddington. I have a big decision to make. But not now. With a twinge of guilt, I push it to the back of my mind.
He seems to have recovered himself, so after a minute we rise and go out to the drawing room where he puts on a record. My mother was an avid collector, classical and jazz, but I doubt if he has added even one LP to her collection, and he certainly hasn’t moved on to CDs. I should be at home making a few late calls, but I sense that he wants me to stay; a short while at least.