I smile and move off. Over the years Henry’s birthday lunches have become occasions to avoid. Last year’s ended with Henry being forcibly ejected from Annabel’s at 3 a.m., swinging a half-empty bottle of champagne: the tawdry stuff of City legend.
‘We’ll tell Henry he’s sacked then,’ the nightdesk dealer shouts. As the Dealing Room door swings shut behind me, I hear them laughing.
In my office the mind-numbing slog through the numbers begins again. Patterns, Hugh said. Anomalies in patterns. But this staring at endless columns of numbers, though I plough doggedly on, I find it harder and harder to pretend that it’s getting me anywhere. Maybe Daniel could have made some headway; maybe Hugh still can. But me?
At last I give up and stare out of the window. Theresa divorcing me for Daniel? And why, after everything else that's happened, is that so very hard for me to accept? And then a figure seems to shimmer in the glass, a gaunt face I haven’t seen for years. Was there a photograph back there in Daniel’s study? Daniel’s mother. She died soon after he married; I think it caught Celia by surprise when Daniel took it so badly. As far as Celia knew they were semi-estranged, all contact between mother and son reduced to the ritual twice-yearly visits Daniel made down to Dorset for Christmas and her birthday. But it would be like Daniel to keep a photograph of her near at hand.
Celia couldn’t have guessed how it was between Daniel and his mother in earlier years, and I doubt that Daniel ever tried to explain. And if he had, what would he have said? That he’d loved his mother? But that was such a small part of his feelings towards her, and after his father’s death - in the years when he became an outer satellite of my family — so much else accrued: resentment and bitterness; hope too, hope disappointed. She was not a good mother to him: in any normal sense, she wasn’t a mother to him at all. My father tells me she was always rather withdrawn. Buttoned up, he says, quite a statement coming from him. But however she was before her husband’s suicide, that event tipped the scales of her life. She turned her back on the world. She sold up their house to pay creditors and retired to the seclusion of a small cottage by the sea. I went down there a few times while Daniel and I were at Eton, visits that I still recall as the worst holidays of my youth.
Nothing in that house was ever quite normal. Some days she insisted on being with Daniel every minute, never letting him out of her reach. He couldn’t even stroll down to the village shop without his mother linking her arm through his, leaning close to him and chattering with a kind of feverish desperation. By the age of fifteen he was already bigger than her, something that seemed to make it so much worse when she treated him like a child, pushing his hair into place or wiping an imaginary streak of grime from his cheek. And then there were other days — stretches of days — when she refused to set foot outside the cottage. At those times she treated Daniel with a kind of listless aloofness, emerging from her room infrequently to take her meals at odd hours, and then disappearing again, leaving us to ourselves. Only we never were by ourselves. Whether we stayed in the cottage or went out, her presence hung over us like a pall. How it must have felt for Daniel I can only imagine. And the last time I went down there I glimpsed something darker.
It was one of her seclusion days; Daniel and I had been in town, we returned to the cottage late. She was waiting up for us.
Where’ve you been?
Town, Daniel said.
Did you ask me?
Daniel looked at me, suddenly nervous, he must have sensed what was coming.
Well did you?
No.
No, she said. No, you didn’t.
But then she seemed to soften; she stepped close to Daniel.
I was worried, darling.
She lifted her hands to his cheeks and touched him.
You must tell me, she said.
And then her fingers closed and she wasn’t touching his cheeks gently any more, but squeezing them hard. There were tears in his eyes.
Promise me.
Yes.
And then she hugged him so tight he had to pull himself free.
Now in my office window the ghostly figures fade into shadows. Daniel, more than most of us, bore scars.
After twenty minutes, Vance drops in to tell me that he’s arranged a meeting with Bainbridge this evening.
I mention Henry's birthday, but Vance already knows. He has told Henry not to get too carried away.
‘What did he say?’
‘He said he wasn’t in the market for advice.’ Vance has that look he used to get when he came to me complaining about Daniel. I remind him that if Henry becomes Treasurer, they will have to work together.
‘He’s got the job?’
‘Nobody’s got the job yet.’
Vance relaxes. He isn't looking forward to the announcement of Daniel’s replacement, I see. For all their disagreements, he had a grudging respect for Daniel’s professional abilities.
‘Right then,’ he says, taking a chair. ‘Other business.’
Parnells isn’t the only deal they're working on in Corporate Finance, just the biggest. Now Vance relates the state of play elsewhere. We’re defending an engineering firm in the Midlands from an unwanted bid: that one’s going well. There are three rights issues in the pipeline, all of them pushing hard to get their paper away before the market turns down: these, too, are on schedule. There’s a management team looking for advice on an MBO, a privatization contract in Bulgaria we’re hoping to win, and a host of smaller deals hovering somewhere between proposal and final signing. Vance confesses he’s lost track of these smaller ideals lately, but he promises to get on top of them again once the Meyers have bagged Parnells. I mention the closing date for acceptances of the Meyers’ final offer: just under two weeks away now. If the Meyers don’t have over half of Parnells by then, the offer lapses; they won’t be permitted to make another bid for Parnells till next February.
Vance squeezes his chin. ‘If we split the Parnells board, the whole pack of cards comes down. And this Ian Parnell looks promising.’
‘Promising for whom?’
‘The Hunt sets off at eleven. Haywood should be on his way down there by now.’
Vance agrees to let me know how it goes. We seem to have reached the end of our conversation, and Vance makes to rise. But then he pauses and drops back into the chair. ‘One other thing,’ he says. ‘Inspector Ryan. How long does he plan to keep calling on us?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. Why?’
‘Just wondering.’
‘Perhaps Lyle might keep him busy awhile.’ I scroll idly through the latest from Bloomberg. ‘But as long as he thinks he hasn’t got the full picture, Ryan’ll be back.’
Vance gives a grunt of displeasure, and I look up. I try to see what Inspector Ryan sees — a man who didn’t much care for Daniel? a murderer? - but it’s too hard to get past the man I know.
‘Stephen, between you and me, what do you make of Mannetti?’
‘Personally or professionally?’
‘Either. Both.’
He considers. ‘Not entirely my cup of tea. I take it this concerns the balls-up with Pamells.’
Not exactly. What it concerns is any proclivity Mannetti might have for violence, and there’s no way to approach that question except directly; but I hesitate. Hugh warned me that there might be more than one person involved in the fraud. And someone killed Daniel. Vance waits.
‘Something like that.’ I nod to the door. ‘If you see William or Henry out there, I’ll be ready in ten minutes.’
He takes this without batting an eye.
3
T
he morning meeting comes as a welcome relief after my second listless trawl through the Shobai numbers. William really has the gift of the gab; he bangs on for five minutes about possible implications following the latest split between the Chancellor and the Bank of England, a subject that bores me at the best of times. Henry makes an occasional intervention, but he seems to be waiting for William, a.k.a. Billy Bullshit, to run out of steam. William finally obliges.
‘Corporate bonds,’ I say, and I point to Henry. ‘You sent a memo to Stephen on the CTL issue.’
‘It was overpriced. We’ve still got a boatload.’ He recites a list of the larger institutions which suddenly lost interest when we set the final price. I jot down the names. Then I ask Henry how much of the CTL paper he thinks he can offload.
‘At the issue price? Fuck all. We start sellin’, the price’ll dump.’
‘Okay. Keep Vance informed with what you’re up to, but don’t offload it yet.’ I tap the list. ‘We’ll see if we can't encourage a few takers first.’
William has been rummaging through his folder, now he hands me a chart. He points out the salient features: the outlook for corporate bonds is bleak. When I try to pass the chart to Henry he keeps his arms staunchly folded, so I drop it on my desk and declare the meeting over.
They rise. William departs clutching his folder, but I signal for Henry to stay.
I glance down at the chart. ‘Happy birthday.’ When I lift my eyes, he is grinning. ‘I suppose it’s too late to postpone the lunch party,’ I say, and his grin fades and then disappears.
‘There’s twenty guys comin’,’ he says dismayed. ‘Jesus.’
I hold up my hands. I tell him to forget that I mentioned it.
‘I can't cancel it now.’
‘Henry, forget it. It’s your birthday, your party. The timing's not great, but we’ll get through it.’ I force a thin smile. ‘I didn’t buy you a present.’
‘Put it in my bonus.’
We both laugh, a rare light moment against the week’s dark backdrop. Then I ask who'll be looking after the Dealing Room in his absence.
‘I’ll still be here,' he says. 'Big Win's doing the food, up in the restaurant. I'll still be here.’
Only physically, I think. And anyway, we both know that the lunch party is almost certain to adjourn to the pub.
'Owen can handle things,' he says. 'If there's any major hassle, I'll come straight down.’
Not if I can help it, he won't. A drunken trader can cause serious problems in the Dealing Room, but a drunken chief dealer can cause absolute havoc. Our last chief dealer came in loaded to the gills one night and sold the Kiwi Dollar through the floor. We were still trying to explain ourselves to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand three weeks later. Once Henry leaves for lunch it will be the end of his working day: he knows it, but he doesn’t want to admit it. Pride. After greed and envy, the City’s third deadly sin.
We spend a few minutes discussing the outlook for the Dollar up to the weekend - long-term planning in the FX market — then Henry leaves.
Alone again, I reach over and flick on the PC screen: the columns of green numbers swim back into view. Rubbing my eyes, I reflect momentarily on how far my own pride has got me. Then I rest my face in my hands. Since last walking out of Hugh's office, I have got precisely nowhere with this. Nowhere at all.
So now I put aside my own pride, I pick up the phone and dial. Two rings, then it's answered.
‘Hugh, it’s Raef.’
Silence. I swivel in my chair and look down to the river. A cruise boat glides slowly toward the bridge, a solitary passenger out on deck, taking in the grey scenery.
‘I’d like to come over.’ The silence draws out; the cruise boat passes out of sight. ‘Hugh?’
'Yeah,' he says.'I was wondering how long it'd take you to call.'
4
H
ugh's whiteboard has been wiped clean. He’s on the phone when I enter, and he acknowledges me with a nod. Silently he mouths the words ‘one minute’, so I wander over to the wall and peruse the framed tributes to Hugh Morgan's many triumphs. There are letters of thanks and commendation from the Met Fraud Squad and the Serious Fraud Office. Others bear the insignia of foreign institutions, mostly American, but some written in Arabic and French. At the far end of the wall there’s a collection of caricatures, a private Rogues’ Gallery of the crooks Hugh has successfully despatched: some round and jolly, others thin and pensive, nearly all of them smiling.
Hugh hangs up the phone.
‘So,’ he says, ‘change of heart?’
I give him a chastened look, and he asks if Penfield is still threatening to move in on Friday night.
‘Not threatening. Promising.’
Hugh drops into his chair and leans back. He clasps his hands behind his head. ‘So,’ he says again, and he smiles.
Unlike others of our generation, unlike me, the passing years seem to have left him largely untouched. He looks much as he did up at Oxford, apart from the white hair, and it occurs to me now that the secret of his prolonged youth might actually be his work: unlike the rest of us, Hugh remains on the side of the angels. And he loves his job.
‘You’ve had a go at the numbers?’
‘Till my head aches,’I confess. ‘No joy.’
‘I meant what I said, Raef. You gave me some help on the Petrie fraud, and I probably owe you. But I don’t owe you enough to get myself compromised digging you out of a hole. I don’t owe anyone that much.’
‘You wouldn't be compromised.’
‘That’s for me to say. And if you think you're going to talk me round without clearing up this Odin Investments business first, don't bother. You could have saved yourself the trip.’
Beneath his stern gaze, my last hope of keeping Odin secret slowly withers.
‘We had a visit from the DTI,’ I tell him, but he makes no comment on that. He waits for my response on Odin. ‘It isn’t that easy, Hugh.’
‘See this?’ He touches a pile of documents on his desk. ‘Evidence to be used in the trial of Mr Habibi. I’ve been to Rabat, Beirut, Cairo, other places you’ve never heard of, putting this together. Once I’ve finished my report, he'll be charged. If the prosecution do their job properly he’ll be put away for a couple of years. That’s real, Raef. A thief goes out of circulation for a while. The world's a little bit of a better place.’
‘I understand that.’
‘No,’ he says quietly ‘No I don’t think you do. Because you’re interfering with this.’ He slams his hand down on the documents. Hard. I draw back in surprise. ‘You want my help, but you don’t want to give anything back. Make up your mind, Raef. Yes or no. Do I help you or not?’