Fatal Error

by Michael Ridpath

  We met at a small pizza place near her office on the South Bank. She was cool, composed and confident. She looked a little older, lines were beginning to show around her mouth and pale-blue eyes, smile lines. Her chestnut-brown hair was cut shorter, and she wore an elegant but informal trouser suit. Jade earrings dangled from her ears. She looked poised and in control. And amused.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘You two joining up to become dot-commers. A dissolute actor and a buttoned-up chartered accountant.’

  ‘Killer combination,’ said Guy with a smile. ‘And unique.’

  I wasn’t sure I quite liked the description of myself as a ‘buttoned-up accountant’, but I didn’t quibble. Suave merchant banker, perhaps? But of course one of the reasons I was doing this was to lose the accountant label.

  ‘I almost didn’t recognize you. Guy has no signs of a hangover and you seem to have lost your suit, David. And your hair.’

  ‘Well, we recognized you,’ said Guy.

  ‘It’s lucky you had the same phone number,’ I said. ‘Seven years on.’

  ‘Same number. Same flat. Same job, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That dull, huh?’ said Guy. And then, in response to Ingrid’s sharp look, ‘Just getting my own back.’

  She smiled.

  We ordered our pizzas, and caught up on what we each had been doing. Then Guy asked the question. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Of your site?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ingrid put down her knife and fork, pondering the question for a few moments. ‘It’s good. I’m impressed. The design is excellent. I know nothing about football, but you’ve got some very good writers. Easy to load. No bugs that I could find. Not bad at all.’

  Guy looked disappointed. ‘Nothing wrong with it, then?’

  ‘No. For an amateur site, it’s really first class.’

  ‘But it’s not an amateur site!’ Guy said, with too much vehemence.

  ‘Oops,’ Ingrid said. ‘I didn’t mean amateur. But you can tell it hasn’t been done by a professional media company.’

  ‘Why? The design’s OK, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. As I said, it’s very good. But the whole thing doesn’t quite hang together properly. It lacks coherence. It’s inconsistent in places, some things are a little difficult to find, everything is given equal weight.’

  ‘What do you mean, equal weight?’

  ‘Well, in a magazine it’s up to the editor to tell the reader what the really interesting stories are and make them easy to see. You can do that on the web, too, although most people don’t. But if you look at some of the good newspaper sites, they are carefully edited. If you know what you want, you can find it. If you just want to browse, the interesting stuff will be there for you.’

  ‘That’s it!’ said Guy, glancing at me in triumph. ‘That’s exactly what I was saying! So what can we do about it?’

  ‘You need someone to coordinate everything. Editor, publisher, call it what you like.’

  ‘Well? Is there anyone you know who might be able to help us? Or who would want to help us?’

  Ingrid paused, as though flicking through a Rolodex in her head. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  But Ingrid didn’t give us a name. At least not yet. ‘I still can’t get over you two teaming up. Despite my crack about chartered accountants, I’m not really surprised about David. But you, Guy? What about the late nights? The women? The drink?’

  Guy took a sip of the sparkling water in front of him. ‘All in the past,’ he said with a grin. ‘Just ask Davo.’

  Ingrid glanced at me. I nodded.

  ‘Seriously,’ Guy said. ‘I’ve changed since the last time you saw me. I’ve come to that point in my life where I want to prove that I’m not a loser, that I can create something worthwhile. I’ve worked hard at this. Fourteen-hour days, weekends, I haven’t had a holiday since I started this thing. And this is just the beginning. But I’m prepared to do whatever it takes. I really badly want this to work, Ingrid. And when I want something, I generally get it.’

  Ingrid raised her eyebrows.

  ‘So who are you thinking of?’ I asked. ‘And do you think they’d do it?’

  ‘I think I do know the right person,’ said Ingrid. ‘But I’m not sure whether they’d do it or not.’

  ‘Tell them to spend a day with us,’ said Guy. ‘If they can’t get away from their job, there’s always Saturday. We’ll be in the office all day: Chelsea are playing away.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘So who is it?’ Guy asked.

  Ingrid smiled. ‘Me.’

  Guy returned her smile. ‘In that case we’ll see you on Saturday.’

  *

  Ingrid came in that weekend. She clicked. Gaz liked her. Neil liked her. Even Owen liked her. At midday, Guy and I talked it over. After our lunch with her we’d both taken a look at the on-line magazine she had developed. It was aimed at professional women in their thirties, not exactly our target market. But it was smooth, sophisticated, interesting, seamless. It worked.

  We offered her a job that Saturday lunch-time. She accepted it on Sunday. She took Monday to go into work to resign and she was in our office on Tuesday morning.

  She turned out to be the final ingredient that made ninetyminutes.com really come alive. She listened to Gaz, encouraged him, and coaxed him into getting his ideas into some kind of priority. She talked to Owen about streamlining links and upload times, agreeing with all his concerns about scalability. And she told Mandrill what to do. It turned out that you can tell enigmatic men with goatees what to do, if you do it in the right way.

  Under Ingrid’s guidance, our site was looking better and better. It was certainly an improvement on the other glitzy but clunky sites which inhabited the soccer space on the web. It looked professional. It looked a winner.

  22

  ‘We need to move faster.’

  I choked in my pint. Guy’s eyes were shining in that messianic way I was beginning to recognize whenever he was talking about Ninetyminutes’ future. ‘Move faster? You’re crazy. We can hardly keep up with things as they are now.’

  We were in the Jerusalem Tavern, the pub just across the road from the office. It was half past nine, the end of another long day. But Guy had plenty of energy left.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ve got forward momentum. Ninetyminutes will go as far as we push it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know all that stuff we were going to do in our second year? Open European offices, the on-line retailing, our own-brand merchandising?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We should start on it now.’

  ‘But we’ve only just got the site going!’

  ‘I know. But it’s like this. There’s a land grab going on at the moment. It’s like the Californian gold rush. Amazon have got books in the US and in Europe. Tesco are going for grocery sales. Egg for on-line banking. We have to get soccer. We’re going to overtake the others in the UK, and we’ve got to overtake them in Europe too.’

  ‘But how can we manage all that?’

  ‘We’ll manage it. All we have to do is think big and think fast.’

  He was mad. But probably right. It had to be worth going for. ‘We’re going to need more money. Now.’

  Guy nodded.

  ‘I think it’s still a bit early to go to the venture capitalists.’

  ‘We have to do it.’

  ‘Your father won’t like it.’

  ‘I know,’ said Guy. ‘But I’m not going to worry about that now. Look. Think through how much we need and then let’s work out how to get it.’

  It was stupid. The whole thing was stupid. I smiled. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll work on it.’

  I had only just started to get down to the numbers when the phone rang. It was Henry Broughton-Jones.

  ‘I took a look at your site the other day,’ he said. ‘Very impressive.’

  ‘I’m glad you like it. Although I ne
ver had you down as much of a football fan, Henry.’

  ‘I prefer the horses. Just to watch, you understand. Look, do you fancy a spot of lunch?’

  If you are the finance director of a start-up and a venture capitalist asks you out to lunch, then you say yes. Especially when he seems pleased that you can fit it in the next day.

  He chose a smart restaurant just off Berkeley Square, the like of which I hadn’t lunched in since my Gurney Kroheim days. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a suit, but green cords, checked shirt and a blazer, with ox-blood brogues. Sort of Wall Street dress-down casual meets Cirencester Agricultural College. It didn’t quite work.

  ‘So what’s this, Henry?’ I said. ‘Dress-down Friday on a Wednesday?’

  ‘It’s subtly chosen to impress thrusting entrepreneurs, David. You are impressed?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Actually, it’s a bloody nightmare,’ he said, running his hand through his thinning hair. ‘I much preferred pinstriped suit, blue shirt and a blue tie. This way my wife laughs at me every morning. She says blue and green don’t go together. Is that true?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell you, I’m afraid. It’s not the kind of thing we have to worry about on our side of the fence.’

  ‘No, I suppose it isn’t.’ He examined the menu. ‘Shall we get a bottle of wine? I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Henry ordered an expensive Montrachet to go with our fish.

  ‘OK, Henry, what’s going on?’ I asked.

  Henry laughed. ‘I’m being proactive. I want you to humour me.’

  ‘Proactive?’

  ‘Yes. We had a big strategy conference at Gleneagles a couple of weeks ago. We talked about the Internet. As you can’t help but have noticed, things are hotting up. In the States websites are going public at astronomical valuations. The VCs over there are making bucket loads of dosh. It’s going to happen here and we don’t want to be left behind.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘As we see it we have two choices. We can either give the next twenty-five-year-old management consultant who comes through the door with a plan to sell bagels on-line a couple of million quid, or we can work out the sectors that look interesting, find the promising firms that operate in those spaces and see if they want our money. Make sure we get to them before someone else does. I thought you were a good place to start.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘I certainly am.’

  ‘So you’re going to give us money just like that?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Henry. ‘We’ll beg you to let us consider your business, string you along and then turn you down. We are venture capitalists after all.’

  ‘Henry?’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You aren’t doing a very good job of marketing me.’

  ‘Aren’t I?’ He had a sly smile on his face. Henry was no fool. He knew he was hooking me with candour where bullshit would fail.

  ‘What about the management issues?’ I asked.

  ‘The rules are changing. You’ve started up. The site looks great. And you’ve got Tony Jourdan on board. Now he has made money before. Also, I know you: you’re a safe pair of hands.’

  I winced. It might be true, but I didn’t want to be known as ‘a safe pair of hands’ any more. I wanted to be a successful, imaginative moneymaker. Give it time and I’d show Henry.

  ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘I never realized that Guy was Jourdan’s son.’

  ‘Sorry. We discussed telling you earlier, but Guy was dead against the idea. He wanted to raise money as his own man.’

  ‘Admirable, I’m sure.’ Henry sipped his wine appreciatively. ‘So. How’s Ninetyminutes getting on?’

  I told him. I incorporated all Guy’s ideas for an accelerated roll-out into Europe and an early start on merchandising. I told him the visitor numbers and extrapolated them wildly.

  ‘Golly, David,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ve never seen you that excited about anything before.’

  I smiled. ‘Really?’ I thought about it. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘How much do you need?’

  ‘To do all that we need ten million pounds now, and maybe another twenty in six months.’

  ‘So Orchestra does this round and then we float the company in the spring?’

  ‘That will work. We should have a great story by then.’

  ‘Sounds good. Will you give us an exclusive to look at the deal?’

  I couldn’t help laughing. Here was a venture capitalist asking me for the business.

  ‘Hey, that’s not fair!’ Henry protested.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to discuss it with Guy.’

  ‘You’ll let me know?’

  ‘I’ll let you know, Henry.’

  Guy went for it. The following Monday, Henry arrived in our offices with his associate, Clare Douglas, a small, slim, no-nonsense Scottish woman with wispy blonde hair and enquiring grey eyes. They crawled all over us, asking everyone about everything. I was impressed by Henry’s thoroughness, but Clare was particularly well prepared. She must have spent the weekend scouring the web for everything she could find on football. She was a tenacious interrogator, picking up on any hesitation or waffle from any of us and pinning us down until she had the details right.

  Henry asked Guy, myself, Ingrid, Gaz and Owen for references, several each. We were all happy to oblige, apart from Guy. I overheard his conversation on the subject with Henry. He refused, saying that since his previous career was acting there was no one who would have anything relevant to say about him. Henry didn’t back down: in fact he became more persistent. In the end Guy got away with giving him the phone numbers of his agents in London and Hollywood. Henry left him alone, but he didn’t look satisfied.

  Neither was I.

  After Henry had gone, leaving Clare to her interrogation of Sanjay, I voiced my fears to Guy. ‘Henry thinks you’re hiding something.’

  Guy nodded.

  ‘Are you?’

  Guy looked me in the eye. ‘Fancy a walk?’

  We strolled out into the small street, bathed in the gentle sunlight of an Indian summer, and made our way north towards Clerkenwell Green.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘I had a bad time in LA,’ Guy said.

  ‘So I can imagine.’

  ‘No, it was worse than London. I totally lost it. Not just drink. Drugs. Lots of them. Very little work. I became low, very low. Clinical depression, they called it. I went to see a shrink.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘She had lots to say. I have issues, Davo. Issues with my father. Issues with my mother. Issues with Dominique. She almost wet herself when I told her what had happened in France. To hear her talk about it, I’m lucky I’m not a psychopath.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you depressed,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t you?’ Guy replied quickly, his eyes searching mine.

  He was asking me to think about it, so I did. Guy the charmer, Guy with the capability to make everyone around him smile, Guy the centre of attention, the natural leader. But I did remember those moments of inexplicable melancholy at school, when he brooded over the failure of a particular girl to fall for him, or just brooded over nothing at all. I had dismissed them at the time as just silly. Guy had the perfect life, everybody knew that.

  But perhaps he didn’t.

  ‘One day I woke up fully clothed on the floor of some guy’s apartment in Westwood feeling like shit. Worse than shit. It took me twenty minutes to realize it was Monday morning and another ten to figure out I was supposed to be at an audition for a part in a TV pilot. It could have been my big break. There was no way I was going to make it.

  ‘The guy whose apartment it was came in. He was only a few years older than me, but he looked closer to forty. “What’s up, John,” he said. He didn’t even know my name! I’d gone there on Saturday night. Sunday had just disappeared.

  �
��I had an appointment to see the therapist that afternoon. She wanted me to talk about my mother and my feelings about her. Which I did. My brain felt like mush.

  ‘Then she began talking. About how I was angry with my father, how my mother hadn’t met my expectations, I don’t know, some psychobabble. I was sitting there, and suddenly my brain cleared. She was talking bullshit. It was all bullshit. I was the one who had got myself on to that floor. I was the one who was screwing up my life. And I was the one who could stop it.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I walked out of her office there and then. Drove up into the hills. Thought about it. Came back to England. Started Ninetyminutes.’

  We walked on in silence until we came to Clerkenwell Green, where we sat on one of the benches. Of course it wasn’t green any more, but it was a relatively quiet oasis away from the traffic of Farringdon and Clerkenwell Roads. ‘You never told me this,’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should have done.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was relevant.’

  ‘Guy!’

  ‘I still don’t. The point is, I couldn’t admit to myself that it was relevant, let alone to you. All that stuff is in the past. Really. You’ve seen me every day for the last five months. You can see I’ve changed.’ He turned to me, begging for my agreement.

  ‘Yes, you have,’ I said. ‘Do you think Henry will find out?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Guy said. ‘The only number in LA I would give him was Lew, my agent. He knows the story, or most of it, but I know Lew. His first instinct will be to lie. He’ll cover for me without really knowing why.’

  ‘You hope.’

  ‘I hope.’

  He probably would. People did that kind of thing for Guy, as I knew very well.

  We sat looking up at the dour façade of the Old Sessions House, the Masonic Centre for London, which seemed to frown down on the trendy bars and restaurants springing up around it. A latex-clad cyclist chained his bike to the pale-green railings of the public lavatories that decorated the centre of the green and sauntered into the one remaining caff in the area.

  ‘Should I tell Henry?’ Guy asked.

  I thought about it. My strategy with Orchestra was to tell them everything. We would be working together through tough times and we needed to trust each other. But Henry thought Guy was flaky already: this would just make it worse. Also, I was inclined to accept Guy’s point of view. He had changed, I knew that. The past just wasn’t relevant.