The Marketmaker

by Michael Ridpath

  I couldn’t help myself smiling at this. It was true that Jamie’s good looks could attract interest from either sex, which caused him intense irritation. He would go spare if he knew Eduardo was using him in this way.

  ‘You won’t tell him, will you?’

  ‘I will one day,’ I said. ‘I won’t be able to resist it.’

  ‘OK, but not tonight. Tonight you will see why these people always deal with us, and never with Bloomfield Weiss.’

  At about eleven, we left the restaurant, amid cries of ‘Eduardo!’

  ‘What happens now?’ I asked Jamie.

  ‘We go back to Eduardo’s flat for more entertainment.’

  I was intrigued. I had caught a second wind, and the exuberance of the crowd was infectious. I bundled into one of the three cabs we commandeered outside the restaurant.

  Eduardo’s flat was in Mayfair, not more than half a mile away. He had a large living room, with plenty of chairs and sofas, and heavy expensive curtains and carpets. The light was dim. We piled in, taking off jackets and loosening ties. There were bottles of champagne waiting on a sideboard, guarded over by a very attractive blonde waitress. I accepted a glass, and slumped into a sofa.

  The man next to me, Felipe, was talking about a notorious conference that Dekker had set up in Acapulco two years before. I had difficulty following all of it because he was speaking fast, he had a thick accent, and in his excitement he didn’t make much sense. But the others around him were nodding and laughing at the memories.

  The champagne was excellent, the flat was warm, the chair very comfortable, and I sat back in a relaxed fug. I stopped trying to focus on the noise around me. This was really rather nice.

  A light flashed in my eye, and startled me. I looked over to its source. It was a small mirror. Eduardo and two of our guests were hunched over it arranging some lines of white powder.

  I smiled at the irony of the situation. Having spent the last ten years of my life in universities, I was used to seeing drugs around me and avoiding them. Things were obviously not much different here. I sank further into my chair, and hoped they wouldn’t notice me.

  The mirror attracted most of the men in the room, including Jamie. He caught my eye and shrugged. I knew Jamie wasn’t a coke user. This was probably another one of those things he did to fit in.

  I looked around for Ricardo. He had slipped away. Everyone else had stayed. His privilege, I supposed.

  Then Eduardo caught my eye, and called across to me. ‘Want some, Nick? You should try it.’

  Damn. ‘No, thank you,’ I said, trying not to sound too prim.

  ‘Hey, try it. It’s good stuff. A little bit won’t do any harm. Get you in the party mood.’ His thick lips broke into a broad smile, but his eyes were hard, commanding.

  ‘No, sorry.’

  He moved over towards me. He sat down on the arm of the sofa. I could smell his eau-de-Cologne. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, and I could see black tufts of hair and the glint of gold. He put his arm round me, and patted my cheek. I wanted to hit him so badly.

  ‘Come on, Nicky, my friend. Enjoy yourself! Party! Hey, what you need is someone to play with.’ Just then the doorbell rang. ‘And here she is!’

  He stood up and made an announcement to the group of expectant central bankers. ‘These are some friends of mine. They all work in the modelling business.’ He winked. ‘I’m sure you’ll like them.’

  He opened the door to a procession of about a dozen stunning women, all with different colours of hair and skin, and all wearing revealing but expensive cocktail dresses. Immediately the men stood up, the noise level rose, champagne corks were popped. The excitement in the room was almost palpable.

  I stayed stuck in my chair. Eduardo put his arm round the waist of a tall girl with red hair and extremely long legs, and steered her towards me.

  ‘Nick, Melanie, Melanie, Nick,’ he said. ‘She’s a beautiful woman, Nick, I’m sure you will like her.’ Then he left us, much to my relief.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Hallo,’ I replied, smiled politely, and ignored her. She sipped champagne, making small-talk in an upper-middle-class accent, to which I didn’t respond. I was very tired, and I wanted to go home. None of these women interested me like Isabel did, and the artificiality of the situation made me queasy. I looked around at the smartly dressed, wealthy men, all with wives and girlfriends, talking animatedly to these women whom they had never met before. Two couples, they were couples already, began to dance, slow and close. I felt ill.

  I stood up, smiled politely at the redhead next to me, retrieved my jacket, and headed for the door.

  ‘Nick!’

  Jamie extricated himself from a blonde, and rushed up to the door. I waited.

  ‘Nick, where are you going?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Look. Stay here. Eduardo won’t like it if you go now. Come on. You’re not even married.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why I don’t want to stay,’ I said. ‘And screw Eduardo.’

  I woke up late the next morning – nine o’clock. I brewed some fresh coffee, made some toast and read the paper. The Polish devaluation was on page eight. More money for Dekker. I finished my coffee, left the flat and strolled up Primrose Hill, with its stunted black lamp-posts, and its daffodils neatly trussed up now they had finished blooming. It was a cool day for May, and a breeze bit into my skin. It felt good, refreshing.

  Just below the brow of the hill, I sat down and looked out over London. In front of me was the extraordinary polyhedron that was the aviary at London Zoo, and beyond that St Paul’s and the skyscrapers of the City. Even further away, barely visible through the new leaves of the trees on the hill, was Canary Wharf.

  The Dekker people would be there now, toiling hard, pretending that they could function normally after the night before. They would be exchanging knowing glances with each other, lying to their customers about what a wonderful place Mexico was, ticking up the trades, ticking up the profits.

  I considered the last few weeks. The favela deal, the money-laundering, Dave’s sacking, my own lying to Wójtek, the sleaze of the previous night. All of these things I could handle individually. But together they made me feel sick.

  I didn’t fit. I could pretend that I did, but only for so long. Or I could change, as Jamie had. Change so that I could lie happily, ignore what needed to be ignored, do what needed to be done. If my conscience couldn’t hack it, then I should just change my conscience.

  Or leave.

  Was I running away? Was it just that I couldn’t take the real world, the commercial world?

  I honestly didn’t think so. There was no doubt that the attack on Ipanema beach had shaken me. But I was sure I wasn’t letting that affect my judgement. I would have to face up to the fact that I had made a mistake in joining Dekker. It was a real cock-up. I was proud, and I didn’t like admitting to mistakes. But there was no hiding from this one.

  Still, as Ricardo would say, a good trader knows when to take his losses. And the time had come.

  It was eleven o’clock by the time I made it to my desk. I nodded to Isabel.

  ‘Have a good night, did you, last night?’ she said coolly.

  ‘No, actually. I found it pretty unpleasant. I left early.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, and returned to her work. She didn’t believe me, of course. I was just telling the same sort of lie that people at Dekker always did. That made me angry.

  I considered telling her what I was going to do, but then decided against it. She would probably say I was foolish, I should accept what I saw. And she’d have good reasons. I’d made up my mind, and I didn’t want to have it unmade.

  Jamie rushed over to me. He seemed on edge.

  ‘Nick, what time do you think this is? We’ve all been in since seven. You’ve got to show you can take a heavy night.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ I said.

  Jamie looked at me as though I was just being difficult. ‘
Anyway, about last night,’ he said, low enough for no one else to hear. ‘You know I normally don’t do drugs. Only when I have to. Like last night.’

  ‘I know,’ I said grimly.

  ‘And those girls. I didn’t do anything with any of them. Just talked, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘You won’t tell Kate, will you? I mean, you should have stayed too.’

  I now realized why Jamie had been sorry to see me go. He wanted me to be an accomplice in crime. Then he would feel better about it.

  I sighed. ‘I won’t tell Kate,’ I said. And I wouldn’t. Even in my current negative mood, I wouldn’t stuff a friend like that.

  Jamie seemed relieved. ‘Good. I’ll see you later.’

  As he left, Ricardo approached. He pulled up a chair next to my desk, and sat down.

  ‘In a bit late this morning, aren’t you?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever you’ve been doing the night before, you have to be in by seven. It’s an unwritten law here. A point of pride, almost.’

  ‘It was two nights,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes, I forgot about your Polish friend. By the way, I was very pleased to see the devaluation come through so quickly. Good work. But the point is, sometimes you’ll have to do seven consecutive nights like that, especially when you travel.’

  It was just a mild ticking-off. A preliminary warning. But it didn’t matter any more.

  I had to tell him now. While I was determined. Before I thought too hard about it. It was strange, with Ricardo here in front of me, the decision suddenly seemed more personal. I was letting him down.

  Enough of that. Tell him now.

  But he had started talking again. ‘It’s about time you did some real work. Isabel is going down to Brazil, and I’d like you to go with her.’

  I shut up and listened.

  ‘The City of São Paulo are very keen to go ahead with their own favela deal. And it will be a good opportunity to persuade our friends in Brazil of the merits of Mexico. You’ve heard Jamie talk about the deal all week, so you should have the story down pat.’

  Go to Brazil. With Isabel. That seemed like quite an attractive idea. Perhaps the resignation could wait until I returned.

  ‘That is, if you’re OK with that,’ Ricardo said. ‘After what happened last time, I’d understand if you were a bit reluctant.’

  I was nervous. But I’d be OK down there as long as I was careful. And, even though I was planning to resign, I didn’t want to show Ricardo, or myself for that matter, that I was a coward.

  ‘No, that’s fine. When do we go?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Tonight!’

  ‘What’s the matter? You had a lie-in this morning.’

  He smiled and went back to his desk. I looked across to Isabel, who had been listening. ‘Is that OK with you?’ I said it without thinking. I suspected she had been distancing herself from me for the last week, and clearly she was not impressed with my participation in the previous night’s events.

  But she smiled. ‘Of course it is. It makes a lot of sense. You know the details of the Rio deal, and Ricardo’s right, you know a lot more about the wonders of Mexico than I do.’

  I caught the irony in her voice. ‘A fine investment opportunity,’ I said.

  She gathered together a pile of paper on her desk and handed it to me. ‘Here, copy that. Read it. And I’ll see you at the Varig lounge at Heathrow, Terminal Three, at eight thirty. The flight leaves at ten. I’ll have the tickets.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, and toddled off to the photocopier.

  Later, on my way out of the office, I stopped at Jamie’s desk.

  ‘I’m off. I’m going to Brazil tonight.’

  ‘Really?’ He frowned. ‘Be careful this time.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I will be.’

  ‘Are you going with Isabel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, have fun.’ He grinned.

  I was about to answer, ‘I will,’ but I stopped, confused. ‘We’ll see,’ I said in the end.

  16

  The plane began its descent to São Paulo. I looked out of the window at the second greatest metropolis on earth. Twenty million people live in Greater São Paulo. Low red-roofed houses sprawled as far as I could see. Sprouting out among them like the white shoots of early spring were hundreds, if not thousands, of skyscrapers. They were grouped in clumps, as if handfuls of seed had fallen together from the hand of a careless sower. On the horizon, between the brown and red of the city, and the blue of the sky, stretched a thick dark grey band of smog. As we descended, the landscape was broken up by a grey ribbon of river, and dozens of industrial sites. We passed low over a lake of the most extraordinary lime green. God had created Rio in a fit of inspired imagination, man had created São Paulo with a total lack of it.

  São Paulo is the business and financial centre of Brazil. Paulistas are proud to compare their city with New York and, indeed, the long avenues flanked with skyscrapers did look impressively commercial. People in suits dashed back and forth, and the traffic moved urgently through the vast network of São Paulo’s highways. There was money to be made and work to be done and, although it was eighty-five degrees and humid, the paulistas would do it.

  We met Humberto Alves’s equivalent in the São Paulo Finance Department. The paulistas had a different approach to dealing with favelas, which they called the Cingapura project. It was an idea that had supposedly been developed in Singapore, hence the name. It involved what they called ‘verticalization’. That meant tearing down the temporary structures and replacing them with modern high-rise hous-ing. It sounded to me more heavy-handed than the Rio project.

  They were hot to trot. The Cingapura project had been under way now for several years, but the City was having problems finding the funds for more construction. Isabel’s ingenious trust idea was just the way to unlock the World Development Fund cash that was desperately needed to move on to the next stage. And now Rio’s deal had fallen through, São Paulo’s would be the first out in the market, which made the whole idea even more attractive.

  It was a Friday, and we had meetings planned for that day and for Saturday, which showed how eager they were. As the day wore on, Isabel and I became progressively more excited as we realized that a deal might actually happen. Bloomfield Weiss were nowhere to be seen: after their humiliating withdrawal from the Rio deal, São Paulo wouldn’t take them seriously.

  It was a hard day, but we worked well together. I had read the pile of documents Isabel had given me on the plane, through the night. I was well prepared, and we operated brilliantly as a team. I quickly got the hang of how her mind worked, and she treated me like a valuable partner. Although I had lost any loyalty to Dekker, I didn’t want to let Isabel down, and besides, her enthusiasm had infected me. I believed in what she was doing.

  At last, at eight thirty, we finished, with a promise to be back in the municipal offices at nine the next morning. We flopped into a taxi, feeling both tired and excited at the same time.

  ‘Did you know that São Paulo has the best Japanese restaurants outside Japan?’ Isabel said.

  ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Would you like to try one?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She leaned forward to the taxi driver. ‘Liberdade.’

  We were dropped off next to a bustling street market. The smell of spices and fried food mixed in the warm night air. Black, white and brown Brazilians mingled with the Japanese and Koreans. It was good to see people wandering around on foot after driving from place to place by car all the time. A statuesque black woman walked past with her little four-year-old son. She caught me looking at them. ‘Hey, how are you?’ she said in English, with a leer. Embarrassed at my innocence in not realizing that a mother and a hooker could be the same thing, I looked away.

  Isabel led me down a street daubed with Japanese characters. Over one million Japanese are supposed to live in
São Paulo. So do many people from the Middle East. I noticed a sign for Habib’s Fast Food, written in English and Japanese. Somehow it seemed typically Brazilian.

  We came to a crooked wooden gateway, behind which was a tiny Japanese garden. Inside was a restaurant, divided into cosy booths. A large Japanese man was ostentatiously wielding huge knives. I winced as he twirled the blades round his hands, expecting at any moment to see a human finger added to the raw fish on the slab in front of him.

  The place was bustling with Brazilians of all shades, but after a short wait we were squeezed into a tight booth for two and ordered beer.

  ‘Well, it looks like a favela deal is finally going to happen,’ said Isabel.

  ‘Yes. And so it should. You deserve it.’

  ‘Thank you. I like working with someone else on this. I normally do all this stuff by myself. But I think we make an excellent team.’

  She smiled at me, an innocent smile of encouragement.

  ‘We do. It’s a shame I won’t be able to see it through with you.’

  ‘You won’t? Why not?’ I was pleased to see the disappointment in Isabel’s face. Actually, I was disappointed too.

  ‘I’m going to resign as soon as I get back to London.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘You know. We’ve talked about it before. I just can’t put up with Ricardo’s way of doing things.’

  Isabel lowered her eyes. ‘I understand,’ she said.

  A waitress came round for our order. After a minute’s consideration of the menu, I ordered tempura, and Isabel sushi.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

  I shrugged. ‘Finish my thesis, I suppose. Try to get a job.’

  ‘You don’t sound very optimistic.’

  ‘I’m not. I needed the job at Dekker. And the money. I won’t be able to sell the flat for as much as the mortgage. So I’ll have to let it, although I’ll be lucky to get enough to cover the mortgage payments. And there aren’t any jobs. But I must admit it will be good to get back to my thesis.’