Lothar’s voice was cracking slightly and he was, Roger could see, shaking. He realised that his boss was not pale because he had given up outdoor sports; he was pale because he was angry. He was as angry as Roger had ever seen him; he was as angry as Roger had ever seen anyone. Roger had the strong feeling that something had gone very, very wrong.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Roger.
And they told him. He found it hard to take in, but the gist was that someone in Compliance had found something he wasn’t expecting in the records of his own computer use. This was Mark’s mistake: he hadn’t allowed for the Compliance and security people monitoring not just everybody else’s computer use, but their own as well. That was on Friday afternoon, three days ago. The Compliance guy had looked into it, and found that unauthorised – probably illegal – trading had been taking place, had alerted his department head, and a whole group of people had worked all weekend. Mark had traded tens of millions of pounds of stock, and was at first about £15 million up, but then took a hit and was now trading about £30 million down. A team of traders was at this very moment unwinding his remaining positions. As of six o’clock this morning he was in police custody, charged with fraud. He had been doing his unauthorised and/or illegal trading right under his boss’s nose. That was the phrase Lothar used – ‘right under his boss’s nose’ – referring to Roger in the third person, so there was a moment when Roger wasn’t sure if Lothar meant his boss’s or his bosses’. It was the former, because Lothar went on to say:
‘This constitutes gross negligence. You are dismissed immediately, for cause. You have fifteen minutes to empty your desk and leave the building.’
At this moment, the door opened and a large black man in a security uniform stood there with his hands folded in front of his waist.
‘You’re joking,’ said Roger.
‘Fifteen minutes.’
‘This is bollocks, Lothar. Even by your standards this is bollocks.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Lothar. Eva looked up and nodded at Roger, the only time they had made eye contact. She stood up and passed him an envelope.
‘You’ll be hearing from my lawyers,’ said Roger, hearing a tremor in his voice.
‘Details are in this letter,’ she said. For an instant, Roger wanted to say something about the Falklands.
‘Clinton?’ said Lothar. The security guard took a step forward. Roger raised his hands in a don’t-touch-me gesture and led the guard back to his office. Those moments were so horrible that afterwards Roger found it hard to remember them. He had to fight an overmastering wish to look at nothing other than his feet. Finding your way in between these desks is tricky! Must look down! No – Roger tried to keep his head up. But it was hard, because every single person in the room was staring at him, and the trading room, which had been its familiar raucous self only a few minutes ago, was now so quiet Roger could hear a faint electronic hum, coming perhaps from the lights, or from somebody’s hard drive, a sound he had, despite years spent in and around this room, never heard before. He had never seen them, his crew, his colleagues, his soon-to-be-ex-colleagues, looking like this: Slim Tony literally had his mouth hanging open, tough Michelle looked as if she was about to cry, Jez was sitting with a phone handset held up to his ear, but was ignoring it, moon-faced, to stare at Roger. Jez’s eyes moved sideways to look at the security guard for a moment. Then they switched back to gawking at Roger. Then back to the guard. Then back again. It was like he was watching tennis. Never had so many screens of data been ignored by so many traders for so long.
In his office, Roger had a decision to make. Do I close the electronic blinds, or do this with the blinds open? Seem ashamed, or let people see my shame? Luckily, the choice was made for him by Clinton the security guard, who hit the switch, and turned the room opaque – which was thoughtful, or experienced, of him. But there nonetheless was a small humiliation even in that, because right up until this moment no security guard at Pinker Lloyd would ever have dreamed of touching any button, of making any adjustment, in Roger’s office, unless told to do so. Clinton felt right at home here. Clinton was in charge. That was how bad this was. That was how real this was. His passwords would already have been changed to lock him out from the bank’s computer systems.
The door opened. Another security guard, who was also black, came in, carrying an empty cardboard wine carton. He put it on Roger’s desk.
‘For your stuff,’ said Clinton. The guard who had brought in the wine carton – a Sancerre, Roger noticed – helpfully opened the cardboard flaps on top. The guard stepped back but did not leave the room.
Roger went round to the other side of his desk. My stuff. Right. The desk had a photograph of Arabella and the boys in winter clothes, taken two years ago at Verbier, the nanny who had just wiped Joshua’s nose out of shot except for a patch of shadow at the bottom of the frame. Arabella hadn’t liked the picture because she thought the light unflatteringly bright but everyone looked so glowing and healthy that it was one of Roger’s favourite pictures of them. He put it in the bottom of the cardboard box, then followed it with his pen. Then his desk diary. He opened the drawers of the desk, and Clinton came round to stand behind him. Roger knew why: to stop him taking anything belonging to the bank. In theory Roger knew the whole drill, because it was standard operating procedure whenever anybody was sacked. But there was, it turned out, a big difference between theory and practice, and it was this: theory was when it happened to other people. Practice was when it happened to you.
There wasn’t much in his desk, except – and this was something he’d entirely forgotten about – a spare shirt he’d taken in for some meeting a few months before but never bothered to put on, and a pair of trainers he’d taken in to work when he was thinking about using the bank’s gym. There was a Moleskine notebook Arabella had put in his Christmas stocking one year when they gave each other stockings (hers had a spa voucher and a pair of earrings). The notebook was empty apart from a set of numbers which Roger took a moment to recognise. They were the sums he had done back when he was calculating his expenditure and how much money he needed from last year’s bonus. The non-appearing million-pound bonus. He started to put his BlackBerry in his pocket, but Clinton held out his hand and coughed. He and Roger looked at each other.
‘What?’ said Roger.
‘That’s bank property,’ said Clinton. He was matter-of-fact about it. Roger put the BlackBerry back down on the desk. He was almost done. He put in a bottle of wine that a member of his crew had given him as a thank-you for something a couple of months back. His desk diary, largely unused, was the last thing to go in his box, which was about a third full. Roger picked it up.
‘OK,’ said Clinton, now clearly in charge. He opened the door, and Roger went through it, the two security guards trailing behind. This time one or two people pretended not to stare; one or two of them looked as if they wanted to say something but weren’t sure what to do. Slim Tony, bless him, held his hand up to his ear with thumb and index finger extended like a phone: call me, or I’ll call you. Then he made a drinky-drinky gesture. Roger smiled at everyone he made eye contact with, because after all, you had to act as if you could see the funny side.
At the edge of the lift lobby, he stopped. Clinton and his colleague stopped too. Roger straightened his back and, with his box in front of him, raised his head to address the whole room.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s been real.’
Then he turned and went out to the lift. It took a very long time to come. Everything seemed too loud: the whirr of the cable as it ascended, the ping of the button announcing its arrival, the faint grinding as the door opened. Down they went. At the ground floor Clinton opened the security gate for him.