I nodded.
‘Firstly, there is the Netherlands Antilles. I have been through the Tremont prospectus word for word. It calls for a number of conditions precedent before the money can be drawn down, including the signature of the Honshu Bank guarantee. Now, that means that Van Kreef, Heerlen must have had sight of that document before the money was paid out. Either they saw a document that was a forgery, or they allowed the money to be released without seeing anything.
‘There is also a requirement for accounts to be audited annually. The auditors are a local firm of accountants. There is nothing in the prospectus which gives us the right to look at the accounts, but they might be filed somewhere.
‘Lastly, the money must have been invested or transferred somewhere from the Netherlands Antilles. Professional advisers will probably have been involved there.’
‘There may well have been lawyers and accountants involved in all these stages, but they will never tell you anything,’ I said. ‘The Netherlands Antilles has a reputation for absolute confidentiality to maintain. If they lose it, then half the money invested through the islands would leave tomorrow.’
‘That’s true. It would be very difficult to find these things out by myself,’ said Hamilton. ‘But I spoke to Rudy Geer last night, one of the top lawyers in the islands. He is going to help me. As far as he is concerned, the last thing he wants the islands to be known for is as a good place to base a fraud. Apparently Van Kreef, Heerlen sail a bit close to the wind. I hope I will be able to mobilise the local establishment to take our side. They would much prefer the money to be returned quietly without anyone knowing about it, than have an international scandal. I shall fly out there the day after tomorrow.’
‘OK, so what do I do?’ I said.
‘Check out Cash,’ said Hamilton. ‘You are going to New York soon, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, in a couple of days,’ I said.
‘Are you going to see Bloomfield Weiss?’
‘I intend to.’
‘Good. See what you can find out about Cash and the Tremont deal. But be very discreet. It is essential that Cash isn’t tipped off.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘What about this guy Dick Waigel?’
‘I’ve come across him in the past,’ said Hamilton. ‘A nasty little man. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was involved. He’s too clever for his own good. See what you can find out about him, but be careful. If he is working with Cash on this, then he will be wary of people asking questions.’
‘What am I looking for?’ I asked.
‘It’s difficult to say,’ said Hamilton. ‘Anything that ties Cash in to Tremont, and in particular anything that suggests what Tremont will have done with our money. The prospectus just mentions investments in securities, without specifying what those might be.’ I had no clue how I would be able to find out what Hamilton was looking for. He saw the look of concern on my face. ‘Don’t worry, even if you don’t turn up anything, I should be able to discover something in Curaçao.’
I felt distinctly uncomfortable about all of this. ‘Shouldn’t we tell someone?’ I said. ‘The police perhaps, or at least Mr De Jong?’
Hamilton sat down again. He opened his fingers in front of him and sighed. ‘I thought about that last night as well. I don’t think we should.’
‘But this is a major fraud. Surely we have to report it?’ I protested. All my instincts told me to go to the police and leave it with them.
Hamilton leaned forward in his chair. ‘Remember I told you I thought I had found a new investor in Japan? Fuji Life? Well, I am pretty sure that they intend to give us five hundred million dollars of their money to manage. All being well, we should get it next month. You know what the Japanese are like. If a group with the prestige of Fuji Life are prepared to give us that much money, others will follow.’ He was talking more quickly now. ‘This could be the breakthrough De Jong needs. It could make us one of the major fund managers in London.’ Hamilton looked me straight in the eye. I could feel the power of his conviction and his will. He wanted to be the most powerful fund manager in London; it was an ambition he was determined to achieve. And I would be cheering him all the way.
He relaxed. ‘You know George. He would want to tell our investors immediately. We wouldn’t be able to talk him out of it. And once he does that, the reputation of our firm will be significantly harmed. It may never recover. We would certainly never see the money from Fuji Life. And as for the police, that would be even worse.’
Hamilton could see I wasn’t quite convinced. ‘Look, you and I have a terrific opportunity to really make something of this firm. Can I rely on you to help? If we can get the money back in the next two or three months, then it will be a lot better for the firm and for George De Jong. If we have got nowhere by Christmas, then we will tell him. You’ve done your duty by telling me about it. You’re safe. This mess is my responsibility and I am going to clear it up.’
I thought about it for a moment. Five hundred million dollars from Fuji Life would bring who knows how much money with it from Japan. We would do some serious trading with funds like that behind us. We would move markets, people would have to sit up and take notice of us. And there was no doubt that I would be part of it all; Hamilton had referred to the two of us as a team. I liked that. We had everything to play for. I knew Hamilton was right about George De Jong; he would want to go straight to our investors and spoil it all.
Well, Hamilton had asked for my help and he would get it. ‘OK. You are right. Let’s find that money.’
I walked back to my desk, excited and a little bewildered. It would be fun working with Hamilton to recover the money. But how on earth would we do it? I had no idea how I would get the information Hamilton had asked for. All I could do was try my best and see what I turned up. Whatever happened, I didn’t want to let him down.
On my desk I found a note that Claire had called. I rang her.
‘BLG.’
‘Hallo. It’s me, Paul.’
‘Ah, good morning. I am glad to see you made it into work. I have some prices for you.’ At the best of times Claire’s voice sounded sensual. When I heard it that morning, it brought back the previous night’s activities.
‘I enjoyed last night,’ I said.
‘So did I. It was fun.’
‘We must do it again sometime.’
There was silence on the other end of the line.
‘You know, Paul, I don’t think we should.’ I had been half expecting this. ‘What I said about it being unprofessional for a salesperson to have a relationship with her clients is true. We had a great night. No harm was done. We had better leave it there.’
I was disappointed. There is no pretending I was not disappointed. If she thought professionalism was so important, what had she been up to last night? But… she was right. No harm had been done. And for the first time in a long while I had had a really good time. I should just chalk it up to experience.
‘Now, about those prices …’
* * *
The Gloucester Arms was as crowded and smoky as usual. In one corner four or five New Zealanders were chatting up a similar number of giggling Italian students. A group of large men propped up the bar, their beer-developed stomachs peeking out underneath too small T-shirts. A mildly eccentric old man muttered to himself as he puffed at his pipe and perused the Daily Telegraph. The seats on either side of him were empty, he looked just a little too crazy for comfort.
The Gloucester Arms was by no means the most attractive pub in London. But it was my local. I probably spent more time in there than I should, unwinding from the day’s tensions, reliving good trades and forgetting bad ones. As I sat in the corner watching the laughing, gesturing crowd of people, and slowly sipping a pint of Yorkshire bitter, the cauldron of competing anxieties that had been bubbling in my head cooled down to a gentle simmer. Debbie, Joe, Piper and Tremont were still all there in the background, but I could worry about them properly tomorrow.
I looked up an
d saw Rob’s chubby face over the other side of the room. He caught my eye and pushed through the drinkers towards me. Every now and then we would have a beer in the Gloucester Arms. He lived quite close, so the pub was convenient for both of us.
‘Hi. Can I get you another?’ he asked. I nodded my assent, and he was soon back with two pints of Yorkshire.
He took a deep swallow of his, closed his eyes and loosened his shoulders. ‘I needed that,’ he sighed.
‘Bad day?’
‘You could say that,’ Rob said. He shook his head. ‘It’s my own fault. I bought a load of Bunds yesterday, because I thought today’s money supply figures would be lower than expected.’
‘So what’s the problem?’ I asked. ‘You were right, weren’t you?’
‘Yeah. The market went up a point. But instead of taking my profit, I bought more.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, it just felt right. Then that bastard Poehl says that the Bundesbank is still worried about inflation despite the good money supply figures, and the market came off a point and a half.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said, as neutrally as possible.
‘That’s right,’ said Rob. ‘Oh dear. I don’t know why I didn’t sell right after the figures came out.’
Rob stared gloomily into his pint. I didn’t know why he hadn’t sold either. But then I didn’t understand why he had put on the position in the first place. He had no carefully worked out reason for thinking the money supply figures would be low. It was just ‘gut feel’. That was certainly not the way Hamilton would have played the situation, but then more traders were like Rob than like Hamilton.
Rob looked up from his beer. ‘That was quite some trade Hamilton did yesterday, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘I couldn’t work it out. Neither could Jeff. In fact I think it upsets him a bit.’ Rob reported to Jeff Richards.
‘What does?’ I asked.
‘Hamilton calling the market right all the time.’
‘Well, Jeff does all right himself, doesn’t he?’ I said.
‘Yes, he does, on the whole,’ Rob said. ‘But he can spend days poring over economic research and statistics before deciding which way the market will go. He then has to wait weeks sometimes for the market to catch up with him. I think seeing Hamilton call the market just right, against all that fundamental analysis, irks him. How does he do it?’
‘He thinks of everything,’ I said. ‘He leaves as little to chance as possible, and when the odds are heavily stacked in his favour, he makes his move. You can learn a lot from him.’
‘I can see that,’ said Rob. ‘Bit of a cold bastard, though, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I said. ‘But he is fair. I like working for him. Seeing him in action, like he was yesterday, is quite incredible.’
He was a great man to learn from, I thought. One day, if I watched and listened closely, I would be just as good as Hamilton. Secretly, I thought I could be better. That was my ambition. And I was determined enough to make sure I achieved it.
Rob nodded his head in agreement and sipped his pint. ‘Aren’t you going on a boondoggle soon?’ he asked.
‘Boondoggle? I am about to embark on a gruelling business trip, if that’s what you mean.’ I smiled at him.
‘To Arizona?’
‘Yes, to Arizona. Although I am going to spend a few days in New York beforehand, to catch up with what is happening on Wall Street. And then of course I will have to spend a day in Las Vegas to check out the Tahiti.’
‘If that isn’t a boondoggle, I don’t know what is,’ said Rob. ‘Mind you, I have an exciting trip ahead of me myself.’
‘Oh yes? I didn’t know Jeff approved of the expense.’
‘Well, he has made a special exception in this case. It’s a two-day seminar on central bank approaches to controlling exchange rates. It’s in Hounslow. Do you want to come? I hear Hounslow is very nice this time of year.’
‘Very kind of you, but no thanks,’ I said. ‘Anyway, enough of work. How’s your love life?’
Gloom instantly returned to Rob’s face.
‘Not so good?’ I asked.
‘Terrible,’ Rob answered.
‘You are still chasing Cathy Lasenby, I take it.’
Rob nodded miserably. ‘I had this great idea,’ he said. ‘Cathy has been avoiding me, there is no escaping that. But I wasn’t going to let her go, just slip away. So I thought I ought to engineer something.’
Rob took out a cigarette and lit it. I hardly ever saw him smoke; never at work, and only occasionally outside, when he was worked up about something. ‘I sent her a fax,’ he went on. ‘I said I was impressed with her ideas on the treasury market, but that before doing business with her, I and my colleagues wanted to meet her properly. So I suggested dinner at Bibendum in Chelsea.’
Rob saw my puzzled expression and laughed. ‘I signed it John Curtis of Albion Insurance.’
‘You did what?’ I exclaimed.
‘She had told me that Albion Insurance was her biggest prospective customer. She had to come. I gave her De Jong & Co.’s fax number to reply to, so that Curtis wouldn’t find out what was going on. Sure enough, she replied.
‘Well, I booked two tables for eight, one in the name of Curtis for four, and one in my name for two. I arrived ten minutes early, and propped up the bar. I don’t know whether you have ever been to Bibendum?’
I shook my head. ‘No, but I’ve heard of it.’
‘It’s quite stylish. It’s in the old Michelin Building, great service, delicious food. A good choice. Anyway, Cathy arrived ten minutes late. She looked stunning in a black dress that showed everything off. The waiter led her past me to her empty table, which was right by where I was standing. She made a half-hearted attempt to ignore me, but couldn’t really get away with it; she was only ten feet away.
‘She caught my eye and I walked over to her table. We both discovered we were waiting for someone – I told her I was waiting for my uncle. She agreed to have a drink with me at the bar. She was nervous, and looked like she needed one.
‘I ordered a bottle of Taittinger, saying that my uncle always drank it, and would order one anyway. We had a glass and then another glass. Cathy took a while to relax. She told me she was very keen to make a good impression on Curtis. After a while she wound down.
‘By nine o’clock neither my uncle nor Curtis had turned up. I suggested that if they didn’t show up in the next ten minutes, we should have dinner together. She agreed. Not surprisingly, nobody showed. The dinner was marvellous. The champagne flowed. We had a great evening.’
‘So far, so good,’ I said.
Rob smiled to himself as he took a swig of his beer. ‘We had just finished a terrific summer pudding, and were sitting back replete, when Cathy said that she was glad that Curtis hadn’t made it. We agreed it had been a wonderful evening. And then …’
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, seeking refuge in my pint. But there was no escape.
‘Then I told her that I had set the whole thing up. My uncle wasn’t coming. Curtis and his colleagues weren’t coming.’
‘And she didn’t like that?’
‘She didn’t like that,’ Rob admitted. ‘She didn’t like that one little bit.’
‘What did she do?’
‘She went wild,’ Rob said. ‘She went bright red. She said she had never been made such a fool of. She said I was devious and totally untrustworthy.’ Rob paused, clearly uncomfortable at the memory of the scene. ‘I told her that I loved her, and I knew she loved me.’
‘What did she say?’ I asked.
‘She told me to go to hell,’ Rob answered miserably. ‘She said I was an idiot, and I should make sure I never bothered her again. Then she got up, and left.’
‘Bibendum, eh? That must have set you back a bit,’ I said.
‘It did. It would have been worth it if she had stayed. I can’t work out why she didn’t. I mean, we got on so well. I know we had a good time together, she would have
to admit that.’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Well, there is not much you can do now.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Rob. ‘Maybe if I did something dramatic. You know, really romantic. Something that would make her realise how important she is to me. Women like that sort of thing, you know.’
I raised my eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. I dreaded to think what Rob would classify as ‘dramatic’. I thought about trying to talk him out of it, but decided it was a waste of time. When Rob’s mind was made up, his mind was made up.
It was extraordinary the way he was able to switch his affections from one woman to another, and within a week or so form a passionate attachment to someone completely new. Almost the mirror opposite of myself, I thought. I remembered Debbie’s encouragement to me to get involved with women again.
It was hard to think of Debbie and Rob together. Debbie’s bubbly repartee and Rob’s earnest declarations of devotion didn’t seem to me to mix very well. Perhaps that is why the relationship had not lasted very long.
Almost without thinking I said, ‘I miss Debbie.’
Rob looked at me. ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice firmly in neutral.
‘You and she saw a lot of each other at one stage, didn’t you?’ I asked.
‘Yes, we did,’ Rob answered. He clenched his pint in front of him. His face reddened noticeably.
‘It’s funny, I never would have guessed,’ I said.
‘We were very professional about it. We never let it interfere with work. Anyway, once it was over, it was over.’
That wasn’t what Felicity had said. I remembered what she had told me about Rob pestering Debbie just before she died, to ask her to marry him. I needed to know what had happened.
‘I saw Felicity the other day. You know, Debbie’s flatmate.’
Rob didn’t say anything so I ploughed on. ‘She said that you asked Debbie to marry you the week before she died.’
Rob stiffened, and looked at me sharply. He was bright red now, the blood had spread out from his cheeks to his ears and his neck. He breathed deeply, his whole body racked with emotion. His chin shook, and his eyes blinked. For a long, painful moment he couldn’t bring himself to say anything.
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