Fatal Error

by Michael Ridpath

  Everybody listened. I watched their faces as Guy told them the news. Shock. Bewilderment.

  ‘How much cash do we have?’ Amy asked.

  Guy glanced at me.

  ‘Twelve thousand, six hundred and thirty-four pounds,’ I answered. ‘That will only keep us going for the next ten days. We have no chance of meeting the salary payments at the end of the month.’

  ‘What if we put in some of our own money?’ said Michelle. ‘I’ve got two thousand saved. I was going to use it for a trip, but that will wait. I’d like to see this through.’

  Guy gave Michelle his broadest smile. ‘Thanks, Michelle. But we’ll need more than two thousand.’

  ‘I reckon I can get my brother to put in a few thousand,’ said Neil. ‘He fancies himself as a savvy businessman.’

  ‘I can put in another ten,’ I said, to my surprise. I had been careful to leave a portion of my savings on one side in case Ninetyminutes hadn’t worked out. And now Ninetyminutes wasn’t working out, here I was committing it. Sod it. It was only money.

  ‘And perhaps we can take a minimum salary this month?’ said Amy. ‘Just enough to live on.’

  Guy looked round the group. The enthusiasm had returned. ‘Excellent. That should buy us enough time to get some serious money from somewhere. David will talk to all of you about how much you can put in, and he and I will work on a plan to raise more finance. And I promise we will keep you informed all the way.’

  We broke up.

  Over the next few days and the weekend everyone became fund-raisers. They were good at it. On Monday morning I had cheques totalling sixty-seven thousand pounds. Amazingly, Neil had come up with twenty, most of it from his brother in Birmingham whose pest-control business was doing very well. Then there was my ten, seven more from Owen, which just about cleaned him out, two from Michelle, three from Gaz, ten from Amy, five from Sanjay and even ten from Mel. I did a series of complicated calculations to ensure that each person got a slice of equity commensurate with their investment. It was difficult, but they all seemed happy with the result.

  We had to slash costs. We followed Amy’s suggestion; everyone agreed to take only five hundred pounds pay that month. The site had to be up and running for the start of the new football season in August. That would still be possible on our reduced budget, but the advertising and PR we had been planning would have to be cut way back. Too far back. If we wanted ninetyminutes.com to be anything more than just a revamp of Gaz’s Sick As A Parrot site we would need more cash. Very soon.

  Two more rejections came in from the venture capitalists. Five down, one left.

  The day came for our meeting with Henry Broughton-Jones. Orchestra Ventures was a relatively new fund, set up by three partners who had left a more established venture-capital firm three years previously. Henry had been one of their first recruits and had recently been elevated to the position of partner. He had his own glass-encased box, complete with armchairs and conference table. He welcomed us genially and encouraged Guy to talk.

  Guy gave the twenty-minute pitch and he gave it well. He had me convinced yet again, and I was hopeful that he would convince Henry. Afterwards Henry asked the right questions, which Guy answered confidently. Henry touched on management, and Guy admitted his own lack of experience, but pointed out that Amy, Owen and I all had relevant backgrounds.

  When our hour was up Henry showed us out, promising to call us with his initial reaction.

  He did. The next day.

  It was a no.

  I cursed to myself, counted to three and asked him why.

  ‘It’s got a lot going for it. The idea makes a lot of sense to me. Especially if you really can sell clothing over the web. The way the Internet is developing, on-line retailers will need good content to sell their products and good content will need some way of making money out of visitors, so this is a neat combination. The real problem is the management.’

  ‘The management?’

  ‘You know how venture capital is supposed to be about management, management, management? Well it’s all true. Especially at our shop. Guy Jourdan talks a good story, but he’s never managed anything remotely like this before. Neither have any of the rest of you, although you all have good technical experience. I’d like to help, but I know if I took this further my partners would shoot me down in flames.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Quite sure. Sorry, old chap.’

  I sighed. ‘OK, Henry. Thanks for looking.’

  ‘No problem. And good luck.’

  I turned towards Guy, who had just finished his own phone conversation. He saw the look on my face. ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ I said.

  ‘Why? I thought he got it. Why did he say no?’

  ‘Management.’

  ‘Management? Meaning me, I suppose.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Bloody hell! What do these people expect? It’s like Catch 22. They won’t give you any money unless you’ve been a big success before, but you can’t be a really big success unless they give you money. It makes no sense! I’ll tell him.’ Guy reached for his phone.

  ‘Whoa! Wait a moment. He’s not going to change his mind just because you shout at him. He gave us a good hearing, we can’t ask for any more than that.’

  Guy withdrew his hand. ‘All right. So where does that leave us?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Oh, come on. There are plenty more VCs out there. Let’s have another look at the BVCA website.’ He began tapping at his keyboard.

  ‘No, Guy.’

  ‘Davo! We need the money!’

  I nodded. ‘But we’re not going to get it from venture capitalists. At least, not yet.’

  Guy could see the way I was looking at him. He knew what I was thinking. ‘No, Davo. No way.’

  ‘You’ve got to try. He’s our last chance.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I want to succeed without him or not at all.’

  ‘That was OK when we talked about this a month ago,’ I said. ‘But now things have changed. Everyone out there has put most of what they own into this. So have I. Ninetyminutes isn’t about just you any more. It’s about all of us.’

  ‘He’ll say no.’

  ‘We’ll never know that until we try.’

  Guy closed his eyes and raised his face towards the ceiling. I let him struggle with himself. Finally, he spoke. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll go and see him. You have to come with me, though.’

  ‘But he hates me more than he hates you.’

  ‘I know. But I’m not doing this alone.’

  This time, Tony Jourdan didn’t pick us up from Nice airport. We took a taxi. We barrelled along a highway through the centre of the city and climbed the steep Corniche. As I saw the sea, the trees and the rocky cliffs, that week twelve years before came back to me. I shuddered. And I remembered Tony’s threat to me. Did I really think he would talk to me, even twelve years on?

  The door was answered by Miguel, who looked even smaller than I remembered him. He greeted Guy politely and led us through the house to the terrace. Once again, the view took my breath away. Cap Ferrat reached out into the Mediterranean, green and rich and lush, with its fabulous mansions and flotilla of super-expensive white craft buzzing around its shoreline. This early in the summer the sky was an even clearer blue. I couldn’t help taking a quick look for Corsica, and I thought I caught a grey smudge on the horizon.

  Tony rose from a chair to meet us. The wrinkles around his eyes had deepened and his sandy hair was fading to grey at the edges, but he still looked slim and active. At least he wasn’t openly hostile. He smiled politely and introduced me to the dark-haired woman who was sitting with him. She stood up, and towered over him by at least three inches. A beautiful woman, I was not surprised to see, but in a more subtle way than Dominique.

  ‘Sabina, this is David Lane, an old school friend of Guy’s.’

  ‘Hello,’ she said, with a friendly smile. She held out her hand
for me to shake, and then kissed Guy on both cheeks. A baby started crying inside. The noise shocked me, it seemed so out of place in these surroundings.

  ‘I must go and check on Andreas,’ said Sabina in a Germanic accent. ‘Make sure you see your brother before you go, Guy.’

  ‘I will.’

  We sat down. I looked around. Up at the house and Dominique’s bedroom, which was presumably Tony and Sabina’s bedroom now, the place where I had lost my virginity and she had lost her life. At the guest cottage where I had skulked during the French police’s inquisition, at the old Roman watchtower where Tony had seduced Mel and where his son had declared his hatred of me.

  Tony was watching. ‘I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again,’ he said. But he said it without hostility, as though he wanted to note our past enmity for the record, before putting it to one side.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘And I’m sorry. But this isn’t a social call.’

  ‘Of course not. You want some more money, don’t you, Guy?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Guy.

  ‘And why should I give it to you?’

  ‘I don’t know why you should,’ he answered. ‘Which is why I haven’t asked you before. In fact, I didn’t want to ask you even now, but David insisted.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Tony, glancing inquiringly at me.

  ‘Guy didn’t want to ask you for money because he didn’t want to rely on you to bail him out of a hole yet again,’ I said. ‘But I’m not asking you to bail Guy out. I’m asking you to invest in something because you can make a good profit out of it.’

  ‘Hm.’ Tony lifted up the newspaper on the table to reveal the business plan we had couriered to him the day before. He picked it up and began leafing through it. ‘Did you write this?’ he asked me.

  ‘Some of it. Guy wrote most of it, though.’ Tony glanced at his son. It was a good document, and Tony knew it.

  Then he started asking questions. They came thick and fast. Henry Broughton-Jones had asked some pretty good general questions, but they were nothing like this inquisition. Although Tony had only had the plan a day, he had virtually memorized it. He asked me to justify the assumptions behind the financial projections, an uncomfortable process. He had looked at several other soccer sites already on the web, and he wanted to know what we thought of them. He asked us about Champion Starsat, the big satellite TV company, and what their strategy for the web would be.

  After an hour and a half, Miguel brought lunch and the questions continued. We did well. Guy in particular held his own. He knew his stuff, Tony couldn’t deny it.

  ‘So, Dad,’ said Guy eventually. ‘What do you think?’

  Tony looked from Guy to me and back again to his son. He grinned. ‘It’s a good idea. I’ll do it.’

  Guy could hardly believe it. His jaw dropped open.

  ‘I need to make some real money again,’ said Tony. ‘All this has to be maintained.’ He gestured to the house and gardens around him, seeming to take in his wife and son indoors. ‘The life went out of the property market years ago. The Internet is the place to be. The challenge will be good for me. But,’ he said, glancing at me, ‘David is right. I’m going to do this on a purely commercial basis. Which means I’m going to want a stake for my two million quid. A big stake.’

  Guy and I exchanged glances. ‘Fair enough.’

  Tony held out his hand for his son to shake.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ Guy said.

  ‘Good. I’ll come to England next week and we can finalize things with your lawyers.’ Guy winced. Tony noticed it. ‘You do have lawyers, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Guy. ‘We have a very good lawyer.’

  ‘Well, I look forward to negotiating with him.’

  I wasn’t quite sure how much Mel would look forward to negotiating with Tony. Neither was Guy, judging by his expression.

  We ordered a taxi to take us back to the airport, and after a quick look at Guy’s six-month-old half-brother, we left. Neither of us wanted to stay in that house a moment longer than we had to.

  Guy shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe it.’

  ‘I told you it was worth a try,’ I said. ‘Cheer up. We’ve just saved the company yet again and you’re looking worried.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel right,’ said Guy.

  ‘Oh, come on. What do you want to do? Turn down his money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, then? This can only be good news.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Guy. ‘I don’t trust him.’

  18

  June 1992, The City, London

  The long hot afternoon was beginning, and I was going to spend the whole of it in Nostro Reconciliations, reconciling nostros. The very thought of it made my limbs feel heavy and my brain tired, so tired. Computer printouts to go through, boxes to tick, mindless tedium. I was a junior member of the audit team for United Arab International Bank. My current task was to make sure that the balances at the bank’s main accounts in each currency, known as nostro accounts, reconciled with the bank’s own accounting system. In theory I might uncover a multi-million-dollar money-laundering fraud at any moment. In practice they added up, with mind-numbing regularity. I glanced across at the manager in charge of the department. He was a small, rather scruffy man who seemed to have a permanent itch just below his collar. He was too nervous to talk to me. I fantasized that this was because he was a master criminal, afraid I would unmask him at any moment. Of course I knew he was actually worried that my boss might criticize his department. But there wasn’t even much chance of that, I thought, as I ticked another box.

  I had tried to get myself on the audit teams for as many banks as possible, on the theory that it would make it easier to escape accountancy for banking once I qualified. A fine theory, but boring, boring, boring.

  I had one thought to sustain me, like the glimpse of an oasis across the desert sands. That evening I was attending a reunion for the old pupils of Broadhill School. It would be held at a hotel near Marble Arch, the headmaster would make a speech pleading for cash and there would be lots to drink. Lots and lots. I was looking forward to it.

  I was also looking forward to meeting the people there. I hadn’t kept in touch with anyone from school; my life at university and as an accountant had taken me away from them. I had read about one or two of them in the papers: a quiet girl in my economics class who had won a swimming medal at the Seoul Olympics and a boy who had rescued his fellow explorers after two weeks lost in the Borneo jungle. I had also read about their fathers: Torsten Schollenberger’s had been accused of bribing a senior German minister and Troy Barton’s had won an Oscar. No mention of Guy’s, though. Nor of Guy. The thought of them both made me shudder. Even five years after the event I couldn’t think of Guy without the guilt flooding back. I hoped he wouldn’t be there that evening.

  He was. He was the first person I saw as I walked into the already crowded hotel function room.

  He was standing holding a glass of wine, talking to two people I vaguely recognized. He hadn’t changed much: his blond hair was now brushed back off his forehead and he had filled out a bit. I hesitated, flustered, unable to decide how to enter the room without him seeing me.

  He looked up and his eyes met mine. His face broke into a wide smile, and he strode over to me. ‘Davo! How the devil are you!’ He held out his hand and pumped mine. ‘Let’s get you a drink.’ He peered at his full glass, downed it all, and dragged me over to a waitress with a tray. He swapped his empty glass for a full one, and handed me my first. ‘Cheers,’ he said.

  An extraordinary wave of relief swept over me, as though a ball of tension that had been screwed up tightly somewhere inside me for the last five years had been released. I had assumed Guy would never want to talk to me again and I had told myself that this didn’t matter. I now realized it did. I also realized Guy was drunk. That was fine with me, but it did mean I had some catching up to do.

  ‘Thank God you’ve come,’ said Guy.
‘Do you remember those two? I don’t. But they seem to think we were best mates at school. Tedious as hell.’

  My immediate thought was that they couldn’t possibly have more boring lives than mine.

  ‘So, what are you up to, Davo?’

  ‘Working undercover.’

  ‘Working undercover! Who for?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. Well, I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you. And that would be messy. I’ve been specially trained, you know. You wouldn’t stand a chance. What about you?’

  ‘I’m a famous actor.’

  ‘Famous actor, eh? How come I’ve never heard of you, then?’

  ‘I don’t use my real name. I’ve been in a lot of big movies recently. The Division, Morty’s Fall.’

  ‘I saw Morty’s Fall,’ I said. ‘I didn’t recognize you in that.’

  ‘That’s because I’m such a good actor.’

  Just then, a big man with square shoulders and a rugby-player’s neck clapped his hands for attention. He was the new headmaster, and he talked about the school and how it needed money for a new theatre. He was inspiring in a down-to-earth way. But my attention was distracted by Guy. He seemed to have come to some kind of silent arrangement with a pretty black waitress who kept bringing us new glasses of wine.

  We drank them.

  ‘Hey, isn’t that Mel Dean over there?’ Guy whispered.

  I followed his glance. It was Mel. Dressed in a smart navy blue suit. And with her was Ingrid Da Cunha.

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Shall we go and talk to them?’

  ‘Yeah. If you like.’ I was surprised Guy actually wanted to talk to Mel, but I welcomed the chance to see Ingrid again.

  Just then the headmaster stopped talking, there was clapping and the crowd, which had been becoming increasingly restless, began to move again. Guy and I weaved our way through to the two women. Guy gently placed his hand on Mel’s behind. She swung round, ready to say something sharp. When she saw who it was she froze, stunned.

  ‘Hi, Mel,’ Guy said. ‘You look amazed to see me. I did go to Broadhill, you know. They have to let me in, although I’m sure they don’t want to. You remember Davo.’