The Marketmaker

by Michael Ridpath

  Inside, the house was furnished in the traditional way but the walls of the hallway and drawing room were adorned with large brightly painted pictures of Brazilian scenes. Most of the flat surfaces supported weird and exotic sculptures, which seemed to combine Amerindian and modern abstract styles. It worked. They filled and brightened what would otherwise have been large, cold, English rooms.

  It was the first warm weekend of the year, and most of the guests spilled out of the drawing room into the back garden to get acquainted with the spring sunshine. The back of the house was much less austere than the front, with a terrace and an arbour and tulips everywhere. A barbecue was going strong. Waiters in white jackets dispensed champagne cocktails, which were eagerly grasped.

  ‘I hate these things,’ Kate whispered to me. ‘I missed the last two because I said Oliver was ill, but Jamie insisted I come to this one.’

  ‘Why don’t you like them?’ I asked. ‘The people seem nice. Friendly.’

  ‘Oh, they are. But they all work so much on top of each other, I always feel like an outsider.’

  ‘There are other wives here, aren’t there?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Trophy wives and trophy mistresses. The wives are the ones with the wrinkles.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘You’re feeling pretty cynical this afternoon.’

  ‘Just look round.’

  I did. There were, indeed, lots of beautiful women fluttering around. Expensively dressed, carefully made-up, the perfect complement to their wealthy husbands.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ I said. We sipped our champagne.

  ‘Who did you go with to Brazil?’ Kate asked, surveying the crowd.

  ‘Oh, a woman called Isabel Pereira.’

  I could feel my face reddening ever so slightly. Of course Kate caught it. The heat intensified. I had been rumbled.

  ‘Oh, yes?’ she said, her hazel eyes shining wickedly. ‘And which one’s she, then?’

  I looked around, and saw Isabel standing on the far side of the group of guests, picking at a chicken leg. ‘She’s over there.’

  Kate stood on tiptoe to get a better look. ‘Very nice. Are you going to introduce me?’

  ‘Um …’ How to get out of this? I looked at Kate. She wasn’t going to let me escape. ‘It’s not like we, you know…’

  ‘Not yet, anyway,’ said Kate. ‘Come on. Let’s talk to her.’

  We pushed our way through the crowd to Isabel. She was wearing a deep-green silk trouser suit, which looked simple but very expensive. She was talking to Pedro in Portuguese.

  Her face lit up when she saw me, or I thought it did. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking. I introduced her to Kate.

  After a few moments, Ricardo appeared. With him was a striking, dark-haired woman, wearing a short black dress that accentuated her figure. And it was quite some figure. Her face was tanned a deep brown, and she had eyes and teeth that flashed black and white. Gold glinted from her ears, her neck and her fingers.

  Ricardo bent down to kiss Kate on both cheeks. ‘How nice to see you,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you could come today. Is Oliver well?’

  Ricardo’s voice held polite concern, and also the barest hint that he knew that Oliver had always been well. I kept a straight face.

  ‘Oh, yes, he’s fine,’ Kate answered brightly.

  ‘Nick, I don’t believe you’ve met my wife,’ Ricardo said. ‘Luciana, this is Nick Elliot.’

  ‘Hallo,’ she said, in a husky, almost cracked voice, holding out her hand to shake mine. ‘Are you Jamie’s friend?’

  ‘That’s me, I’m afraid.’

  Ricardo turned to Kate. ‘Of course, you must have known Nick for quite a while.’

  ‘Nearly ten years. In fact, I’ve known Nick for longer than Jamie.’

  ‘Oh, really? You met at Magdalen?’ Trust Ricardo to remember my college.

  ‘No, the Cowley Road.’

  Ricardo laughed. ‘I remember it well. Was Brett’s Burgers still around when you were there?’

  Kate smiled. ‘It certainly was.’

  ‘Well, we can’t quite compete with that. But grab yourself a burger, or anything else you’d like.’ He waved towards the barbecue, rather incongruously tended by two men in white coats. ‘There’s some good red wine somewhere about, or you can stick to champagne if you prefer.’

  He noticed Kate’s glass half filled with water. ‘Or there’s a man somewhere with elderflower pressé. Try some. It’s good.’ With that he drifted off.

  ‘How the hell does he know about Brett’s Burgers?’ I whispered to Kate. ‘He wasn’t at Oxford, was he?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘But he knows everything. And I mean everything. You’ll get used to it.’

  Then Kate turned to Isabel, and Luciana to me. ‘I hear you had an unpleasant first visit to my country,’ Luciana said. She stood very close to me. Although she was well made-up, I could see the lines round her mouth and eyes. They were hard eyes. But at this range her chest was impossible to miss by any heterosexual male over the age of twelve.

  I scrambled my brain into order. ‘Yes, it was. But Rio’s a beautiful city. The most beautiful I’ve ever seen. Are you from there?’

  ‘No, São Paulo. But my father had business interests in Rio, and we have a house there. My brother spends much of his time there now.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure. Francisco calls himself a financier, but I don’t know what that actually means. I have two others – one runs the family businesses in São Paulo and the other is a candidate for the state government.’

  So, Luciana had a brother called Francisco who was some kind of financier. Interesting.

  ‘Don’t you miss Brazil?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I do. And I go back quite often. But what can you do? I met Ricardo when we were young, in America. We were in love. We got married.’ She smiled. ‘It’s not so bad. And I have my business.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Interior decoration. I have clients in London, Paris, New York. Normally they are from Latin America. They want to decorate their houses with things that remind them of home. I like to create a sophisticated modern interior with a Latin theme. Something that reflects the personality of the Latin in northern Europe. You saw the drawing room?’

  ‘I did. I liked it. You couldn’t do something with my flat, could you?’ I said.

  ‘I’d love to. But I’m afraid you couldn’t afford me.’ She grinned teasingly at me over the rim of her champagne glass.

  I blushed. I couldn’t help it. ‘Yes, well,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I’ll stick to Ikea and Dulux.’

  She laughed. ‘Tell me what you saw in Rio.’

  So I told her. And I told her honestly, about the favelas, about Cordelia’s shelter, about the kids who had attacked me. She listened. She was interested. She certainly wasn’t stupid. I was flattered to have such a beautiful, sophisticated and, let’s admit it, voluptuous woman hanging on my every word.

  Suddenly I was interrupted. ‘Oi, Luciana, tudo bem?’

  Isabel leaned in front of me, and kissed Luciana on both cheeks.

  ‘Tudo bem,’ she replied. ‘You know, Nick, obviously.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve just come back from a trip together,’ Isabel said.

  ‘Oh, you went together, did you? You didn’t say it was Isabel who showed you all this, Nick.’

  It was true I hadn’t. I shrugged.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you to him,’ Luciana said, flashing me a coy smile, and she drifted off to entertain someone else.

  ‘It looked like you two were having an interesting conversation,’ said Isabel.

  ‘We were, actually.’

  ‘She was all over you. She’s old enough to be your mother.’

  ‘No, she’s not.’

  ‘She’s forty-two.’

  ‘So? My mother’s fifty-eight.’

  ‘She’ll eat you alive.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Isn’t she Ricardo’s wife?’r />
  ‘Yes. When she sees him. Which, given his working hours, is virtually never. The rest of the time she is her own woman.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘So a significant number of the younger men here say. Just ask your friend Jamie.’

  ‘Isabel!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s a bit risky fooling around with the boss’s wife, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re right. Most of them turn down her charms. They know what would happen if Ricardo ever found out.’ She looked at me pointedly as she said this.

  ‘Well, thank you for the careers advice.’

  I smiled to myself. Beneath the banter she was jealous. I hadn’t meant to provoke her, but it felt good to think that she cared about me. I looked up and saw she was smiling at me. I wanted to pull her to me and kiss her. The problem was there were forty other people standing around. Another time. Another time soon.

  ‘How’s your chest?’ she asked.

  ‘Still a bit sore, but healing fast,’ I answered.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Thank you for looking after me so well in Rio. I don’t know how I would have managed without you there.’

  She smiled. ‘If you live in Brazil, you need to know how to work the system. There is always a jeitinho to get things done. I’m an expert.’

  ‘Well, I’m very glad of that.’ I looked around the English garden and up at the back of the house. ‘This isn’t the kind of place I would expect Ricardo to own at all.’

  ‘It’s not so surprising. Many people in South America like to have a farm in the country. We have one, for instance. And you know what they say about the Argentinians?’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘They’re all Italians who speak Spanish and pretend to be English.’

  ‘Ross is hardly an Italian name, is it?’

  Isabel’s eyes twinkled wickedly. ‘No, but Rossi is.’

  ‘Huh? No!’

  ‘Just a thought.’

  I switched my empty glass for a full one from the tray floating past, and grabbed an orange juice for Isabel. She was driving. So were at least half of the other people at the party, I thought, but that didn’t seem to make much difference to them. They liked to break the rules in that as in everything else, I supposed.

  ‘Can you believe the women here, Nick?’ It was Dave, the Romford trader, waving a can of beer. Miguel, the tall Argentinian, was at his elbow. ‘Oh, sorry, Isabel, present company included, of course. I don’t know where they get them from. Miguel thinks that that Danish bit with Carlos is his au pair.’

  To my disappointment, Isabel slipped away, out of my peripheral vision.

  ‘So where’s his wife?’ I asked.

  ‘At home with the children, I imagine,’ said Miguel. ‘Someone has to look after them, after all.’

  ‘Are you getting one of them, Mig?’ Dave asked.

  ‘What, an au pair? But I haven’t got any kids.’

  ‘So she’ll have more time to devote to her other duties, then.’ Dave leered, and lifted the can of beer to his lips.

  Miguel shook his head. ‘I pity Teresa. That’s Dave’s wife, you know,’ he explained to me. ‘A perfectly nice woman, she just has this little problem with her eyes, that’s all.’

  ‘Oi!’ Dave squawked loudly.

  Miguel winced. ‘And her ears.’

  The party warmed up, and I began to enjoy myself. Dave and Miguel were an unlikely double act, but very funny once they had a few drinks inside them. Eduardo even honoured us with his presence, bringing in tow a German model, barely out of her teens, who didn’t seem to speak much English or Spanish. This didn’t seem to bother Eduardo overmuch. He, too, was charming and friendly, but I noticed that everyone tensed in his presence.

  A good while later Kate swayed over towards me. Or she might have walked in a straight line, and I might have been swaying.

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ she said. ‘I’m off. I can’t stand much more of this, and if I leave now I’ll get home in time to put Oliver to bed. Jamie says he’s staying. He’ll take the train back. Will you look after him?’

  I frowned, trying to decide whether I should go with her.

  She saw what I was thinking. ‘No, you stay here. You shouldn’t leave early, but I can. And I’d be happier if you kept an eye on Jamie.’

  ‘That I’ve done before.’

  ‘OK, see you.’ She put a hand on my arm. ‘Isabel’s nice,’ she said, winked and was gone.

  An hour or so later, as people began to disperse, I phoned for a taxi to take us to the station, and then I went in search of Jamie.

  He wasn’t inside from what I could see, nor was he in the garden. I caught sight of Isabel. ‘I’m off now. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, goodbye. It was nice to talk to you.’

  It was a polite thing to say, but I was sure she meant it. ‘Yes, it was nice,’ I said. And then, ‘Have you seen Jamie?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘He went that way to look at a statue with Luciana. That was about half an hour ago.’ She gave me an amused glance.

  ‘A statue?’

  ‘Yes. Apparently there is a statue of Hercules in the wood. One of the Victorian owners of the house removed his equipment. Luciana has had a replacement specially made. I believe she’s very proud of it.’

  Christ! Kate had said keep an eye on Jamie and I hadn’t. But to try to do something with the boss’s wife at a party with everyone from work would be foolhardy. Insane. Just the kind of thing Jamie when drunk might do.

  I hurried out of the back garden round the side of the house, trying to make as much noise as possible, so as not to surprise them doing something I didn’t want to see. A little copse of trees stood discreetly back from the house, with a path winding through it. It was beginning to get dark.

  ‘Jamie!’ I called. Too loud. Someone might hear. Someone other than Jamie.

  I found the statue. No sign of Jamie or Luciana. But I wasn’t surprised to see that Luciana hadn’t stinted in returning Hercules his manhood. He was now a very proud statue indeed.

  ‘Jamie! It’s Nick! Come on.’ I crashed through the undergrowth, and eventually spilled out in front of the house. There was Jamie in a little group with Luciana, Eduardo and Pedro, standing right by the taxi. They were all smiling, all tipsy.

  ‘Ah, Nick! There you are!’ he called, with a broad grin. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere! Our taxi’s here.’

  I was too embarrassed to go back in and say goodbye to Ricardo, but I thanked Luciana, who drew me close to her for a kiss on both cheeks.

  ‘It was very nice to meet you, Nick,’ she purred. ‘Come and see my designs some day.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ I said, and bundled Jamie into the taxi.

  The favela deal was dead. Bocci’s papers carried the scandal over the weekend. It harmed Humberto Alves and the Mayor, but there wasn’t enough in it to do them serious damage. Brazilians had found a new enthusiasm for rooting out corruption; they had even successfully impeached a president. But there was nothing that really surprised the city in this story: everyone assumed that this kind of thing was still going on. Besides which, Rio’s mayor, assisted by Humberto, had done much to clean up the municipal finances and the city was not about to throw them over because of one unsubstantiated scandal.

  For Bloomfield Weiss things were different. International banks dealing in Latin America have to be scrupulous about keeping their reputations clean. Gringo financiers make easy targets for accusations of corruption, as Bloomfield Weiss were finding out. They couldn’t risk more damage to their reputation by going ahead with the deal. So they pulled out.

  The Dekker machine continued to operate as if nothing had happened, bringing bond issues to market, spreading rumours, buying, selling. I watched Jamie work: it was all beginning to make more sense to me now. But we were both subdued. We didn’t mention the favela deal, money-laundering or where he and Luciana had got to at the party the previous day.

&nb
sp; But our activities in Brazil were not only marked by Bocci’s newspapers. A small article in IFR caused a ripple round the dealing room when it was first noticed. It was in the gossip column, where the following week’s events often first appeared as unsubstantiated rumour.

  Dekker Ward employee attacked in Brazil

  An English banker working for London-based Dekker Ward was in Brazil last week. Nicholas Elliot was walking on Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro late at night when he was attacked by a gang and stabbed in the chest. Elliot is understood to have recovered well from his ordeal.

  Not so his colleague, American citizen Martin Beldecos, who was murdered in his hotel room in Caracas last month, ostensibly by thieves. Two such attacks so close together demonstrate the increasing dangers facing bankers travelling to South America. However, there may be a more sinister explanation. Sources inside Dekker Ward say that Martin Beldecos was working on verifying the origin of funds received by Dekker Trust, Dekker Ward’s Cayman Islands affiliate. There are rumours in Caracas that Beldecos’s murder was not the result of a random burglary gone wrong, but a contract killing. A spokesman for Dekker Ward denied this, and spoke of the shock felt by the whole firm over the tragedy, and their sympathy for Martin Beldecos’s family.

  Jamie scanned the article and threw me an anxious glance. ‘That wasn’t you who talked to them, was it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But it’s interesting, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s just gossip. The real trouble will come when Eduardo finds out who has been talking to IFR. Watch out, here he comes.’

  Eduardo was walking across the square to Ricardo’s desk, clasping his yellow copy of IFR. They conferred for a few minutes, and then Eduardo broke away.

  ‘Shit! He’s coming this way,’ whispered Jamie.

  He was indeed, a large dark presence, brows knitted in anger.

  ‘Follow me,’ he growled at me, barely pausing to slow down as he passed Jamie’s desk.

  I did as he asked, into the opaque corner office.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  I sat.

  He strode round his desk and sat facing me, his large shoulders hunched over the plain white pad of paper in front of him.

  ‘Well?’

  Initially cowed by his presence, I now began to feel angry myself. I had done nothing wrong. I wasn’t a schoolboy. I shouldn’t be intimidated like this.