‘I’ve told you, dear, none of the galleries round here will touch them.’
‘How about London?’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. They wouldn’t be interested in this.’
I wasn’t so sure. I suspected that someone somewhere would jump at her work. But these pictures were for herself, not other people.
We were looking at a particularly haunting painting of the blackened shell of a wreck being slowly sucked down into the sand flats off Brancaster beach.
‘I’m sorry you’re giving up Russian literature, Nick,’ she said.
‘I’m not. I’ll still read. And, once I’ve made some money, I’m sure I’ll go back to it in some form.’
‘Hmm. Just promise me one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Don’t marry a banker.’
I couldn’t answer. The sadness of it wrenched my gut. I glanced at her profile. She had a broad, intelligent face, beneath thick hair only now beginning to go grey. She was still attractive, and was striking in the wedding photograph that had been in the sitting room for as long as I could remember. They must have been in love when they married, although I could only remember sniping in my childhood that changed to major rows in adolescence. Then, since I had left home, this had lapsed into silence.
My father gave me a lift to King’s Lynn station. Just as I was getting out of the car at the station entrance, he called after me, ‘Oh, Nick?’
‘Yes?’
‘If you hear any good tips, don’t forget to let your old man know, eh?’
He winked.
I smiled quickly and slammed the car door shut. It was with a huge sense of relief that I felt the train lurch away from the platform.
As the fens dashed past the grimy train windows, I thought of the City as my father saw it. Lunch, drink, talk, helping out old pals, getting on to a good thing. It was a long way from the efficient activity of the Dekker machine, high up in its gleaming tower, whisking billions round the world. But there were some shared assumptions. In both the deal was all. You helped out your friends and screwed your enemies to get the best deal. And then you felt clever about it.
A heavy shower scurried across the fen, and hit the train in a tantrum, splattering the window with angry raindrops. I slumped back into my seat, and didn’t feel very clever at all.
14
It was a slow cycle into work on Monday. The weather was still foul, and my heart wasn’t in it. By the time I made it up to the fortieth floor, still dripping, the meeting was already well under way.
As if on a signal from my arrival, Ricardo cleared his throat. ‘I’m sure you all read the article in last week’s IFR,’ he began. ‘The content of the article itself doesn’t concern me, it was obviously rubbish, and a gross insult to Martin and his family. What does concern me was that one of us spoke to a journalist, and gave him information that was highly detrimental to the firm. This person has been fired.’
There was a murmur from the gathering. Everyone looked round at everyone else to see who was missing. Quickly, the murmurs took shape into a recognizable word. Dave. Dave! Why had he done it? What had he said?
‘This person will not only not work for Dekker again, but he will also not work in the bond markets,’ Ricardo continued in a clear voice. ‘He has breached the confidentiality agreement you all signed as part of your contract when you joined Dekker Ward. As a result he has lost all of his interest in the employee trusts. He has been warned not to talk to the press any further. The market will be told that he made large trading losses, and that he covered them up. I expect all of you to back this up if asked.’
We were all silent now. Dave was a popular member of the team. The mood of the room felt finely balanced between sadness at his dismissal and shock that he had betrayed the rest of us.
‘Some of you may think this treatment is harsh. But we’re all a team here. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. There are many people out there who don’t like Dekker and what it has achieved. Together we can win. But if any one of us betrays the others, as this man has, then we’re all vulnerable. I will not allow that to happen.’
Ricardo glanced round the room. His eyes, which were usually so cool, were angry now. But even his anger drew us in. We were all angry.
The meeting broke up, and we exchanged glances. Many eyes rested on the empty desk where Dave had worked. Alberto, the sixty-year-old ‘coffee boy’, was putting his belongings into a couple of boxes. Under Ricardo’s stern gaze, we returned to our desks and picked up phones, but over the course of the morning the room buzzed with speculation.
And so did the outside world. Word had already gone round the market that Dave was one of that most dangerous of animals, a trader who not only made losses but lied about them. The rumour echoed back into the Dekker trading room, where to my surprise it was confirmed. Even Jamie told Chris Frewer it was true.
‘Why did you do that?’ I asked him, shocked. ‘Couldn’t you just say you don’t know why he left?’
Jamie sighed. ‘In these situations you have to follow the party line. Ricardo will be watching. This is a test of loyalty for all of us. And he’s right. We’ll only succeed if we stick together.’
I listened in mounting disgust to what was happening around me. The initial shock and sadness at the loss of a friend was already changing, as Dave’s character was rewritten. Just as the Dekker machine could persuade itself that a lousy bond issue was the investment opportunity of the year, so they came to believe that Dave was an incompetent fraud. They did it with determination and purpose, and without looking each other in the eye.
I watched, stunned. I had no idea whether Dave was a good or bad trader, but I knew that he was not what these people were portraying.
The man leaning against the bar lifting his second pint of bitter to his lips seemed very different from the boy I had known at Oxford. First he was a man. He had a grown-up suit and briefcase, but then so had Jamie and I, and that didn’t mean anything. But he also had a receding hairline poorly hidden with wisps of blond hair, a wife and baby, and a way of talking that made him sound closer to forty than twenty.
Stephen Troughton had studied PPE with us. He had always been precocious, capable of discussing knowledgeably mortgage rates, house prices and unit trusts, when the rest of us would have nothing to do with such bourgeois concerns. He had talked his way into the City with no difficulty, and had been one of the lucky few that Bloomfleld Weiss had plucked from British universities during the 1988 milk-round. He had taken to Bloomfield Weiss like a duck to water, and had done very well. Even though he was the same age as Jamie and me, he looked thirty-five at least, and used this to his advantage. Stephen Troughton had gone far.
Jamie saw him once or twice a year for a drink, to ‘catch up’. I had tagged along this time, even though I hadn’t seen Stephen since university. We were in an old pub in a mews in Knightsbridge, touristed by day, besuited in the evening.
I was beginning to realize that ‘catching up’ meant comparing careers. I watched them at it.
‘Did you hear about that big Brady trade we did last week?’ asked Jamie, at the first opportunity.
Stephen laughed. ‘Oh, that, yes. We were just dipping our toe in the water.’
‘Got a bit wet, didn’t you?’
‘A little, but we can take it. We’re the biggest trading house in the world. That kind of loss just gets hidden in one day’s profits.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Stephen. He lowered his voice, as though he were about to impart something of great importance. ‘You’d better watch yourselves, Jamie. Bloomfield Weiss are serious about the emerging markets. And when we get serious about a market we tend to make our mark. Don’t get me wrong, Dekker are a clever little firm, but when a market matures, then it’s only natural that the big boys will take over.’