Chris had been good at chess. His father had taught him young, and taught him well. He had never pushed him to work hard at it, but had shown a quiet satisfaction whenever Chris played well. Chris played for his school, he played for his club, he beat players several years older than himself. After his father died, he tried even harder, with some success. At eleven, he could beat the average adult club player. He won a junior county chess championship. People expected great things of him; everywhere he was compared to his father.
And then, when he reached thirteen or fourteen, things changed. As he played in higher circles, his opponents improved. He lost matches. Once he even lost to a precocious twelve-year-old. He became even more competitive, he spent hours reading chess books, perfecting his openings, trying to understand the deeper subtleties of strategy, but none of this seemed to help. He lost to better players, and he didn’t understand why. He came to realize that they had a better feel for a position than he did, that he could be pottering along quite happily through the game, while his opponent was consolidating a winning position that Chris hadn’t even recognized. If his father had still been around, he might have explained what was going on. But his father wasn’t around. It came to him that he was never going to be as good a player as his father. There would always be thousands of chess players better than him. The memory of his father’s quiet smile of satisfaction as he made a good move, a memory that had sustained him through so many games in the years since his father’s death, began to fade. It was no longer fun to play chess. He gave up.
He had done similarly well as a trader. For a few years, while he was trading so successfully at Bloomfield Weiss, he had thought he’d sussed it. He developed a feel for a good position and a bad one. He knew when to buy more of a good position, to have the courage to be a pig, as George Soros would say, and when to cut a bad one. The profits rolled in, until that disastrous summer when, thanks to Herbie Exler, he had dropped six hundred million. Eventually, with Lenka’s help, he had managed to tell himself that that really wasn’t his fault, that it wouldn’t happen again.
And now it was happening again. Sure, he wasn’t going to lose six hundred million dollars, but he could lose Carpathian’s reputation, and with it its investors. And that mattered.
Once again, none of this seemed to be his fault. But perhaps there was something he just couldn’t see, something about how to deal with the people he worked with, that meant that he found himself in these disastrous positions. Lenka could have helped him. But Lenka, like his father, wasn’t there.
As he sat at his desk, he felt the icy fingers of panic slowly grip at his chest. He was afraid. Not just afraid of losing money on the Eureka Telecom position, or even of losing Carpathian, but afraid of losing the shreds of his self-esteem that he had fought so hard to regain. The market was battering him, and he was hurting.
The phone rang. He picked it up.
‘Carpathian.’
‘Chris? It’s Megan.’
‘Oh, hi. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. What about you? You sound sort of tense. Or do you traders always answer the phone like that?’
‘I suppose we do,’ said Chris, although he was impressed and pleased that Megan had managed to pick up his mood. ‘But it’s true, I’m not having the world’s greatest day.’
‘Are the markets going against you?’ she asked.
‘You could say that,’ said Chris. ‘Never mind. How’s Cambridge?’
‘Great. They’ve given me some really nice rooms in college in a building that must be three hundred years old. And I’ve met my supervisor and found the library. I’m really quite excited by it all.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I was calling because I’ve booked a flight to Prague with Czech Airlines from Stansted Airport for Wednesday morning, coming back that night. I thought we could go together.’
‘That’s a good idea. Give me the details. By the way, I think Duncan will be coming with us.’
‘OK,’ said Megan, unenthusiastically.
‘Look at it this way, it’ll give me a chance to find out what he was doing hanging around Lenka’s place.’
‘I’d have thought that was pretty obvious,’ Megan said disapprovingly. But she gave Chris the flight information.
‘By the way, I’ve worked out who Marcus is,’ Chris said.
‘And?’
‘Alex’s brother.’
‘Of course!’
‘I checked with Eric, who confirmed it. Apparently, Marcus tried to speak to him too, but Eric avoided him. And Eric told me to say “hi” to you, whatever that means.’
‘OK,’ said Megan. ‘How is he?’
‘Doing formidably well. He must be earning millions in bonuses.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ said Megan. ‘Well, I’d better go now.’
‘OK. Oh, Megan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thanks for ringing. It has been a bad day, and it was very nice to hear from you.’
‘Good,’ said Megan, and she was gone.
Chris waited for ten minutes in the cool glass-clad atrium of United Arab International’s office in Bishopsgate, watching suited bankers come and go. At last, Pippa emerged from the bank of lifts. She was a small woman with curly blonde hair and a bright smile. Quite pretty.
Chris kissed her on the cheek. ‘Let’s go to Williams. It’s close.’
‘Isn’t that where you and Duncan used to meet?’ Pippa asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, I hope he won’t be there now.’
‘I don’t think he will,’ said Chris.
They reached the dark pub in five minutes. Duncan wasn’t there. Chris bought himself a pint of bitter, and Pippa a glass of white wine, and they sat down in the same dark corner he and Duncan had occupied the week before.
‘I haven’t got long,’ Pippa said. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting someone later in Covent Garden.’
‘OK,’ said Chris. ‘I’ll be quick. It’s about Lenka.’
Pippa’s face clouded over. ‘Oh God, not that woman. What’s Duncan done now?’
Chris was taken aback by her reply. It was clear she hadn’t heard. It would be unfair to ask her any more questions until he had told her.
‘Lenka’s dead. Murdered.’
Pippa was shocked. ‘Oh, my God. It wasn’t Duncan was it?’ Then she looked confused. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? It must have something to do with Duncan.’
‘I have no reason to think that it has,’ said Chris, although in truth Pippa’s initial response had alarmed him. ‘It happened in Prague. The Czech police think it was a local who did it.’
‘Whew,’ said Pippa. ‘Duncan must be in a state.’
‘He is.’ Chris took a sip of his beer. ‘I take it that you knew about Duncan’s feelings towards Lenka?’
Pippa snorted. ‘Knew about them? Yes, I knew about them. At first, she just had the status of old girlfriend to be wary of. But then, pretty soon after we were married, I realized she was much more than that.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘From Duncan. He told me. It was mad. He began to talk about her occasionally, and then more and more often. You know how frank Duncan can be. I used to think it was cute. Now I think it’s just plain stupid. Once he came back from somewhere drunk and he went on about how Lenka was the only woman he’d ever really loved. To his wife, for God’s sake! He wanted to go and see her for lunch or a drink. I told him not to, but I’m sure he must have gone anyway. Not that I think he did anything. I think she had more sense than that.’
‘I don’t think they “did anything”, either, if that helps,’ said Chris.