Upstairs, I hand Daniel’s note about Odin to Hugh. Hugh places the yellow Odin page side-by-side with the yellow Twintech page that I found among Daniel’s papers. The layout of the two pages is identical.
‘You said Daniel would have told you about Twintech if he wasn’t involved in some way,’ Hugh reminds me. ‘You were sure if he’d come across it accidentally, he would have brought it to you.’
‘I’m sure he would have.’
‘What if it wasn’t accidental?’
I look up, uncertain what he is getting at.
‘What if he was doing what we’ve been doing?’ Hugh says. He touches the Odin page. ‘He did it once before, didn’t he?’
‘An investigation?’
‘Ahha.’
‘He would have told me.’
Hugh taps the Odin sheet. ‘After this? Put yourself in his shoes. He found the Odin deal, he thought he‘d uncovered a big problem, and took it straight to you. What did he get? A pat on the back? Well done, Daniel, you’ve just saved the bank several million quid?’
‘I told him I was aware of the situation.’
‘Anything else?’
There was; and remembering it now, I see what Hugh’s getting at. It feels like curtains being drawn back, and light pouring in.
‘I told him I didn’t need his help. I told him to stay out of it.’
‘You told him to stay out of it.’ Hugh echoes. ‘And he was your Treasurer.’
In fact I told Daniel rather more than this: I warned him that he'd already done quite enough meddling in my affairs. My affairs. And if Daniel found Twintech after that?
‘So let’s say Stewart still didn’t like the look of the Odin deals even after you told him to lay off,’ Hugh says. ‘Then he thinks to himself, if Odin got through the system, could there be any others? He does a trawl, just like I did. That’d be reasonable, wouldn’t it? He was Treasurer, he had responsibilities.’ Hugh raises one yellow page. ‘Bingo. He finds Twintech.’
Which would explain why Daniel was asking Karen about weaknesses in our system: not to exploit them, as we’d supposed, but to plug the gaps. And the disorder in the folders up in the filing room: knowing Daniel’s talents in that direction, how hard would he have found it to get hold of Sandra’s key for a few hours?
‘Who was he going to tell?’ Hugh says. ‘You? Uh-uh. You’d already warned him off Odin.’
‘That was different.’
‘Maybe from where you’re sitting.’
Hugh puts the pages side-by-side again and we inspect them. I think of Daniel at home in his study during the last weeks of his life, inspecting the same pages. He didn’t want to rob Carltons, but he thought someone else was doing that. But who could he tell? If he told Sir John or Vance, it would come back to me. And if he told Karen Haldane, he’d have known she couldn’t resist confronting me directly. Finally I figure it out, why Daniel couldn’t tell me.
‘I was Daniel's number one suspect? He thought I was Twintech?’
‘At a guess,’ Hugh says. ‘At least he thought you were part of it. 'Like with Odin.’
‘And that note Penfield got? From Daniel?’
Hugh puzzles things out as he speaks. ‘He’d have tried to nail Twintech down. Only he’d have had one big advantage over us. The Dealing Room. He knew the place inside out. And say he uncovered the person or persons behind Twintech.’ He looks at me. ‘Now what happens?’
‘The fraudster killed him?’
‘It’s over a million pounds, Raef. Maybe not much to you, but you’ve got plenty down there in Treasury who wouldn’t be on a hundred thousand a year. Someone thought the stakes were big enough for a murder or it wouldn’t have happened.’
We are silent a moment; pensive. Daniel's murder is the one incontrovertible fact in all this, the one wrong that can’t be glossed over or put right. And he died trying to help Carltons.
‘Thanks, Hugh.’
‘For?’
‘You could have done your speculating while Ryan was here.’ I pick up Daniel’s Twintech sheet. ‘I don’t think I could have explained why Daniel didn't bring this to me.’
‘I’m sure you'll think of something,’ he says, reaching for his jacket.
‘Hugh, we agreed Odin was private.’
He points to the sheet. ‘That’s not Odin. And this is just a reprieve. If we haven’t cracked this by tomorrow night, Ryan gets told.’
Friday night. We get this sorted out or it blows up in my face tomorrow night. I bite my tongue. I pick up the Odin page, folding it into the Twintech page, then I pocket them both. Hugh flicks off his PC, and at the far side of the room, a fax whirrs quietly into life.
20
‘Y
ou want to sell the CTL paper?’ Vance says.
‘I don’t just want to Stephen. I am.’
Ten minutes ago I instructed Henry to start selling tomorrow morning. Evidently Henry thought Vance should be informed, and now they’ve come to oppose me together.
‘Why?’ Vance asks. ‘Stephen, it has to be sold. No arguments.’
‘A lot of people bought that paper in good faith. What do we say to them when they see us baling out?’
‘It’ll dump,’ Henry remarks. ‘Through the floor.’ Exactly what’s needed to spring Hugh’s trap. But Stephen and Henry have very good reasons to try and stop it from happening. Our customers, the ones who bought CTL, will be furious. We told them the CTL bond was good value. ‘Buy,’ we said. And now, a very short while later, we’re getting set to offload. Some of them will be looking for blood.
Now I walk around my office, hitting switches. ‘We made a mistake. Let’s cut the loss and get out.’
‘Cut the loss?’ Vance sounds appalled. ‘We won’t be cutting a loss, we'll be cutting our own throats. How long do you think it’ll be before we can shift any paper again?’
‘Dump CTL tomorrow and we won’t make budget in Treasury this month,’ Henry says. ‘No way.’
I turn out the last light and they follow me into the corridor, still pressing their case. I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t something more to their pleas than conscientious concern for the bank. Someone killed Daniel. And if Hugh’s latest guess is right, it wasn’t because Daniel was involved in Twintech, but because he found someone else who was. The way the Twintech deals have been spread across a number of markets, Hugh is quite sure it must be someone senior. A junior trader just wouldn’t have the opportunity to deal that widely. Henry? Vance? I step into the lift, then turn to face them.
‘The debate’s over. Tomorrow morning the CTL paper gets sold.’
They look at one another dismayed. The lift door closes.
Daniel, I think; why didn’t you just tell me? All this time I’ve not quite been able to accept him as the fraudster, he wasn’t like that. Not dishonest with money. But I never expected this. He was investigating the whole thing, and he never breathed a word of it to me? Those last few months of his life, what must it have been like for him? He suspected me, but he couldn’t be sure. And so he worked on alone, unaided, to try to get to the bottom of Twintech. Now I lean back against the wall of the lift, clutching my briefcase. I wanted him to suffer. I hated him, and I wanted him to suffer. Revenge. That’s what I wanted. Not for my family, not even for Annie, but for me. And now this. All that time, those weeks that I nursed my hatred and plotted revenge, what was Daniel doing? He was working for the good of the bank.
The bell rings, the lift doors open, and I stand here gazing across the empty foyer. Daniel, though he did not know it, was struggling to help me. And was he murdered because of that?
21
A
t eight o’clock I arrive at Eric Gifford’s flat in the Barbican. Charles Aldridge, my father and Gifford: all three of them are here. There’s a pall hanging over the room: talks, apparently, have not gone well. While Gifford takes a call in the adjoining room, my father brings me up to date.
‘Gifford’s not convinced. He wants some assurance he won’t be investing in a bottomless pit.’
‘He wants to drive down the price, you mean,’ Sir Charles observes.
I ask if any price has been mentioned. My father mumbles something about preliminary figures. I don’t like the sound of that, so I repeat my question.
‘We're not in a position to dictate terms, Raef. The way things stand, 220’s a reasonable number.’
‘220?’ I look at him in disbelief. ‘Last year he was floating 350 past us. 220?’
‘The situation’s changed, you must see that.’
‘We approached him,’ Aldridge reminds me.
And that, of course, is the problem. Gifford holds the whip hand. It doesn’t matter that Carltons has the same staff as a year ago, or that in nearly every material particular, we are unchanged. What matters now are the indefinables, confidence and trust: without these, we are nothing. A bank only in name. We're not beating off Sandersons as I feared last weekend; we’re imploring American Pacific, anyone, to say they still want us.
Gifford reappears. The three of them take up their interrupted conversation, and my father tries to draw me in, but I find the whole business too depressing. Instead I go and stand at the full-length windows and look out over the City lights. So this is it, I think. More than two hundred years after our first move into banking, the Carlton family is preparing to withdraw. If our share price stays over 195 tomorrow, the withdrawal won’t happen immediately; but with Gifford’s urbane East Coast voice droning behind me, the City spread out below, it comes to me quite clearly that Carltons has reached some kind of natural turning. I stare out. I sip my drink. My grandfather’s ambitions for Carltons will never be realized. Not Sir John’s fault, or my father’s, I see that now. It’s just that the world has moved on, and away, from our kind of banking. London is no longer the financial world's centre of gravity. I was born a few generations too late. I hear Charles Aldridge asking Gifford to look at the figures once more. This really is too dismal for words.
‘How did it go?’
My father. Arms folded, he stands beside me, looking down on the City. Behind us, Gifford’s still busy with Sir Charles.
‘We’re down to half our funds. Last trade 219, but the fall’s slowing.’
‘We can’t change the number, Raef. Not now.’ The agreed 195 he means, the trigger for the sale of Carltons to Gifford. Presuming, of course, that Gifford can finally be persuaded to buy. Not the certainty we’d first imagined.
‘No,’ I agree. ‘We can’t change it.’
‘I noticed the 209 bid wasn’t touched.’
I swirl the ice-cubes round my glass. My father has spent the afternoon glued to a dealing screen, waiting for the single trade at 195. This realization descends on me like a dark, drizzling cloud.
‘Can I ask a question?’ I say, glancing back over my shoulder: Gifford and Sir Charles are still talking. Then I face my father. ‘Do you want to get rid of the bank no matter what?’
‘It isn’t like that Raef. How could anybody plan for what’s happened this past week. I couldn’t. You couldn’t. Our responsibility's to salvage what we can.’
‘What if we can salvage the bank? What if I stop the slide before it hits 195? We’ve still got a bank.’
‘Badly weakened.’
‘But still ours.’
He purses his lips. ‘We’ve agreed the figure, Raef. I’ll stand by that.’
‘If I stop the slide now, we’ll keep the bank, but lose Boddington. We won’t have the funds to redeem your pledge.’
Rather pale now, he inclines his head. Whatever the cost to him, he’ll stand by his word. Edward Carlton has a strength I never suspected, and I feel beneath the warring emotions of this moment a real stirring of pride. My father is an honourable man. He takes my arm, intending to guide me back to rejoin Eric Gifibrd and Charles; but just then my mobile rings. Hitting the button, I step aside.
David Meyer. He wants to know what is happening on Parnells. And he wants to know right now.
22
W
hen I ask for Stephen Vance’s room the Savoy concierge points to the lounge. ‘He’s just gone through.’
I find Vance seated at a table in there. He’s alone, considering his drink.
‘Where are Haywood and whatsisname?’
He starts in surprise, lifting his head. ‘I thought you weren’t free.’
‘I wasn’t. Where are they, upstairs?’
Vance nods. There’s a good scattering of people here tonight; most of the tables are taken. A man in black tie plays the piano. I sit down and try to relax.
After fifteen more minutes at Gifford’s flat, I couldn’t endure any more of his grindingly reasonable objections to the possible merger. He’s sensed that we need him, and he’s doing everything possible to screw down the price. He intimated that it might be best if the Carlton family severs its ties with the bank immediately. He even suggested that if the merger were to go ahead, Charles Aldridge might be a useful interim chairman. I didn’t bother to wait and hear what he had in mind for me. And it might not come to that anyway. That’s what I tell myself. I want, even at this late stage, to hope.
‘David Meyer wants to know what’s happening.’
‘Bloody man.’
‘Can I tell him we’ve bagged a Parnell?’
Vance turns his head, glancing towards the empty doorway. ‘Tell him to get off our backs,’ he says.
‘He’s worried.’
Vance gives me a look. He says, pointedly, that David Meyer is not alone. Then his finger traces the rim of his glass. ‘You can let him know we’re making progress. We might have something concrete for him tonight.’ He takes another swig, emptying his glass.
David Meyer won’t be happy with the brush-off, but I find myself slipping quite easily into Vance’s downbeat mood: my session with Eric Gifford has prepared the way. To hell with David bloody Meyer, I think. I order a drink, and another for Vance. Here we are, once again, in the Savoy lounge. We must have been here scores of times over the years, sometimes with clients but often just the two of us; a quiet drink on those rare evenings when work was put to one side. And suddenly that’s what I seem to want now, not to discuss Parnells or David Meyer, but to regain some personal connection with a friend.
My grandfather gone now, and Daniel, Stephen Vance is the one man left who understands what I feel for the bank. But I don’t want his sympathy. In fact I don’t know what I want really. Maybe it’s just that with the sword of Damocles hanging over us, I want to be reminded of those early years when I worked in Corporate Finance. The good years. Vance drove me hard then; I drove myself hard, I had something to prove. If the dreary summing-up must be made, it was during those years that I did my best work. Pride. Is that all this is? Perhaps what I want is to be reassured by Vance that I have actually achieved something, anything at all, in my career.