The Marketmaker

by Michael Ridpath

  Luís made no attempt to hide his pride, and indeed he had a lot to be proud of. ‘But it’s a shame to build this up and see it die with me. We wanted a son, Vivian and I.’

  ‘Vivian was your wife?’

  He nodded. He turned back and looked at the fazenda. ‘She never saw all this. All that I have created. Or perhaps she can see it now.’

  ‘There’s Isabel,’ I said.

  Luís snorted. ‘Isabel! What chance have I of getting her to work for the bank? She’s far too stubborn. You heard her. My daughters! I suppose no father understands his daughters. But I just don’t know why Isabel and Cordelia won’t for once do something sensible. Maybe this episode will make them think again.’

  ‘It might. But I’m not sure that’s a good thing.’

  He turned to look at me, listening closely.

  ‘They’re just like you, aren’t they? They want to go their own way. Do their own thing. The fact you disapprove just encourages them. I’m sure that’s true of Isabel.’

  Luís gave a brief, dry laugh. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘That’s one of the reasons I like her.’

  There was a pause. He studied me. ‘You are close, aren’t you? More than colleagues. More than friends?’

  For a moment I panicked, imagining myself accused by an indignant Latin father of deflowering his daughter. But Luís’s gaze was warm, encouraging.

  I nodded.

  Luís turned to continue up the hill. ‘Bem,’ he muttered, I think. I couldn’t quite hear.

  We decided to stay at the fazenda. It was tough on Nelson; he had to make the hour and a half drive up from Rio every day. But it was good for Luís, and good for me. We were optimistic. As long as we could put up with the waiting, Isabel would be free.

  On Sunday night Cordelia and Fernando left for the city by helicopter. Zico called again. I listened in to the conversation. I heard what I thought were the words thirty million, and then a bit later Luís countering with two million. We were still a long way apart, but we were drawing ever closer. At this rate, one day in the next few weeks, Isabel would be released. I thought about returning to London. Things seemed to be on track, and there was little more that I could do to help. And there was a limit to how long I could stay.

  We were beginning to get used to the slow tempo of the negotiations. But on Tuesday, day eight, all that changed.

  20

  Nelson came up in the morning for breakfast. He seemed excited.

  ‘I have some news.’

  Luís looked up from the tiny roll on his plate. He still wasn’t eating much. ‘About Isabel?’

  ‘Yes. The police have received a tip that they’re taking seriously. You know the Disque Denúncia?’

  Luís nodded.

  Nelson explained for my benefit. ‘It’s an anonymous phone line the public can use to tip the police off about criminal activity. Apparently, about a week ago, a blindfolded woman was seen being led from a car to a small shed in the middle of the night. The shed is in Irajá, in the north of the city. The police are going to check it out this morning.’

  ‘They will be careful, won’t they? They’re not going to storm the place or anything?’

  ‘Da Silva assured me they won’t. If they find Zico and his friends, they’ll just watch them, and arrest them after Isabel is released.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Luís glanced at Nelson suspiciously.

  ‘I’ve known Da Silva for fifteen years. He’s given me his word.’

  Luís looked worried, and I shared his unease. Nelson was an ex-cop so he would say we could trust the police, wouldn’t he? But, on the other hand, they would be more likely not to lie to him. We would see. In any case, there was no doubt in my mind that a dramatic rescue attempt was not the best way to release Isabel. The anxiety grew the more I thought about it.

  Nelson could see Luís’s reaction as well.

  ‘The shed will be under surveillance now,’ he said. ‘Da Silva said he would telephone us here this morning.’

  The detective was as good as his word. The police had found the shed empty. It had a basement, and there were plenty of signs that this had been used to hold a kidnap victim. There were marks where a tent had been erected in the middle of the floor. This was apparently a common way of holding kidnap victims so that they couldn’t see their captors. There were food wrappers, empty plastic bottles of mineral water, and some scraps of bread that was quite fresh. There were no signs of blood.

  Someone had been held there, and had recently been moved.

  Half an hour later the phone rang. But it wasn’t Da Silva. It was Zico.

  This time the conversation became quite heated. I could follow very little of it, but Luís was as angry as I had seen him. After a couple of minutes he slammed down the phone and turned on Nelson, eyes blazing.

  They exchanged some sharp words of Portuguese, and Luís stormed out of the sitting room into the garden. I glanced at Nelson. For the first time he looked flustered and angry. I followed Luís.

  He stood, staring out at the garden, breathing heavily. A cloud was gathering above the hill at the head of the valley, threatening to roll rain down towards us.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Merda,’ he muttered. Then ‘Merda! Merda! Merda!’ more loudly.

  I waited.

  ‘Zico wanted to know why we had told the police. I said that we hadn’t, that they had just received a tip-off. He didn’t believe me.’ He sucked in his breath. ‘Zico said I was lucky Isabel wasn’t dead. He said he would give me just one more chance. I should pay ten million dollars tomorrow night or Isabel will die. He said now the police are on to him he can’t afford to wait. He’s going to call me back in two hours. He sounded serious.’ Luís jerked his head back towards the house. ‘I told that idiot that the police should have checked with me first before going to the hideout. I should never have trusted him!’

  I let Luís stew for a minute. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Pay the ransom, I suppose. I can’t risk Isabel’s life further.’

  ‘Can you get ten million dollars by tomorrow?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’ll be difficult.’

  ‘What does Nelson say?’

  ‘I don’t give a shit what Nelson says.’

  We walked along the path towards the lake. A tree burned orange in front of us. The clouds at the head of the valley were darkening, although the garden itself was still in sunshine.

  I took a deep breath. ‘It looks like the police made a mistake. Maybe Nelson made a mistake in trusting them. But his advice has been good so far. He’s objective, and he’s seen all this before. Maybe we should listen to him. Then we can decide what to do.’

  We walked on in silence. I was scared about Isabel. But I thought our best chance lay in behaving calmly and following the rules. Zico was prepared to release Isabel alive; Luís was prepared to pay a ransom. As long as we kept our nerve, that’s what would happen.

  ‘OK, let’s talk to him,’ said Luís.

  ‘Good,’ I said, and we hurried back to the house just as the sky went dark and raindrops began to fall.

  ‘Keep negotiating,’ said Nelson. ‘He has lowered his price so fast because he knows you are worried about the police. He hopes to close the deal quickly. Well, that’s fine with us, but not at ten million. We were raising our offer by half a million at a time. We should reduce that, let him know we’re getting close to our ceiling. Offer two million two hundred thousand.’

  ‘No!’ said Luís. ‘I can pay more than that! Why don’t I offer three?’

  ‘Because he will think there is a lot further to go!’ said Nelson, who was beginning to lose his patience. ‘Don’t you see that if your offer goes up in larger amounts, the whole negotiation will take longer?’

  I saw what Nelson meant. So, in the end, did Luís.

  Zico called back when he said he would. Luís gave him his offer of two point two million dollars. The conversati
on was short. Luís went pale, but stood his ground.

  ‘What did he say?’ I asked, as soon as Luís had hung up.

  ‘He asked for five million,’ said Luís. ‘And he said Isabel would definitely be dead tomorrow night if I didn’t pay up. I think I believe him. He’ll call back in another two hours.’

  I turned to Nelson, who looked thoughtful. ‘He’s coming down too quickly,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen a demand drop so fast before. And he seems genuinely eager to get the payment through fast.’

  ‘He thinks the police are on to him,’ Luís muttered.

  Nelson shook his head. ‘I don’t think that would bother him too much. Kidnappers expect the police to investigate them.’

  We watched him. His face clouded over into a frown.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  He sighed. ‘I think we should ask for proof of life again.’

  Luís exploded. ‘You heard him! He’s not going to stand for that now. There’s no time!’

  I was silent. I felt sick. I knew what Nelson was thinking.

  Luís saw my expression. ‘What?’

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

  ‘What is it?’ demanded Luís.

  ‘Nelson thinks she might be dead,’ I said quietly. ‘That’s why the kidnappers are so eager to be paid now.’

  ‘No!’ shouted Luís. ‘We have no reason to think so. I won’t accept that!’

  Nelson held up his hands. ‘You may be right. I hope you’re right. But we should just be sure.’

  ‘And I suppose you want me to make a tiny increase in my offer again?’

  Nelson nodded.

  ‘Well, I won’t! I’m accepting their five million, and I’ll have Isabel back here tomorrow night.’

  I glanced at Nelson who was watching Luís closely. He shrugged. ‘I can offer my advice, nothing more.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Luís?’ I said, hesitantly.

  He frowned towards me.

  ‘I know you can pay five million dollars, and you want to. That’s fine. I’d like to see Isabel back soon too. But Nelson’s right, we should just check to see that she is alive. So why don’t you agree to five million provided they come back with proof of life? If they have her, and they know they will get their five million, then there’s no reason for them to delay in replying, is there?’

  I looked over to Nelson for support. He nodded.

  ‘OK,’ said Luís. ‘But you think up the question.’

  The question was, ‘Which town does Dave come from?’ Luís never got a chance to ask it.

  When he suggested proof of life, Zico refused. Luís stuck to his demand, with no luck. Eventually the phone call ended, with Zico swearing he would kill Isabel.

  Luís put down the phone. His face was fixed. Cold.

  ‘You know what this means? She might be dead already,’ said Nelson quietly.

  Luís stood before me, tall and gaunt. The events of the last few days, and especially the last few minutes had aged him.

  ‘I’m just going up to her room,’ he said.

  I pounded up the track, the trees and undergrowth of the Atlantic rain-forest on either side a mass of dark murky green. But I hardly noticed the profusion of life around me: my eyes were focused on the dirt under my feet. My brain was focused on Isabel.

  My feelings were a swirl of contradictions. I hardly knew her, yet I felt as though I knew her better than any other human being in the world. The conversations we had had together played over and over again in my mind, especially those discussions we’d had long into the night about everything and nothing. I saw parts of her, now her huge eyes, now her shy smile behind a strand of black hair. I remembered the time I had first seen her, leaning against a desk in the Dekker Ward trading room, sexy, instantly attractive.

  I burst out of the forest into the sheep meadows above. Behind me, I knew, was a spectacular view of the fazenda and the outskirts of Petrópolis. But I didn’t look at it. My head was bent, my eyes down.

  I was angry, angry that Isabel might now be dead. Angry with myself for abandoning her, angry with Nelson for not preventing the police from disturbing her kidnappers, angry with Luís for not being more in control. But worst of all, and this was something I could hardly admit to myself, I was angry with Isabel. She knew she was a kidnap risk, so why hadn’t she been more careful? Why had she gone and got herself killed just now, just when I realized how much she meant to me?

  Except I didn’t know how much she meant to me. I was confused about that, too. We were only at the beginning of a relationship. How would it have developed? Would it have come to anything? I found my imagination fast-forwarding to a whole life together. Would she have fitted into my small flat in Primrose Hill? It was difficult to imagine her there.

  It was absurd. It probably never would have worked. And now, because of Zico and his friends, I might never know what might have been.

  But I couldn’t accept that.

  Was she really dead? Nelson thought she was. Luís thought she wasn’t. We hadn’t heard a word from Zico.

  Logic suggested Nelson was right, and he had experience of these situations. But until we had proof that she was dead, I couldn’t believe it. I was with Luís. I had to hope and pray she was alive, whether it made sense or not.

  Finally, near the summit of the steep hillside, I stopped and sat down. I could just see the fazenda nestling in the valley below.

  It had been a horrible couple of days. Luís had been like a ghost. Cordelia had gone into hospital: her doctors were worried about the effect all the stress was having on her pregnancy. Nelson Zarur had offered to waive his fee, but in the end Luís had paid it.

  I had phoned Ricardo and told him that it looked as if Isabel might have been killed. It was difficult. He had tried to take it coolly, but his voice sounded dead, empty. I told him I would be coming back to London soon. He cut the conversation short. Isabel had been right: she had meant something to him.

  ‘She’s still alive, you know.’

  It was evening. Through the french windows behind us, the last red embers of the sun were crumbling behind the mountain at the head of the valley. In front of us was a roaring fire. We had been sitting staring at it in silence for half an hour, each holding a glass of Ballantine’s.

  I nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘We have to believe that, no matter what Nelson or Zico or anyone else says.’

  ‘I know.’

  Silence.

  Then Luís stirred. ‘What was she like? At work?’

  ‘She was quiet. Serious. Very good at her job. She got on with things. I think people respected her.’

  Luís shook his head. ‘I’m surprised she went into banking. Disappointed, in a strange kind of way. She seemed so idealistic. Of course I disagreed with her, and we had arguments. But I respected her ideals. And then she went to the United States, and came back eager to prove to the world that she could be a better banker than me. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. But she certainly was driven. She did want to prove something, and I think it was to you.’

  ‘But she didn’t have to!’ said Luís. ‘It was enough for me that she was my daughter. I didn’t expect her to become a great financier as well.’

  I thought about this for a moment. ‘Perhaps it was the fact that you didn’t expect anything of her that drove her on. I don’t know. But don’t blame yourself. You brought up a wonderful daughter. You should be proud.’

  Luís just stared into the fire.

  ‘She hadn’t lost her ideals,’ I said. ‘That favela deal was a brilliant idea. And she believed in it. For her it was a chance finally to use her skills to do some good.’

  ‘It was good. It’s a shame it didn’t work.’

  ‘That was only because Ricardo Ross destroyed it.’

  ‘Oswaldo Bocci is scum. Ricardo is a fool to have anything to do with him. I know Dekker Ward are very good, but sometimes they go too far. I wish Isabel had worked for someone else.�
��

  ‘They have a bad name?’

  ‘Yes, they do. They’re not exactly corrupt, Ricardo isn’t that stupid. But there is a …’he searched for the word ‘… smell about them. They deal with people they shouldn’t. Like Oswaldo Bocci. They bend the rules when they shouldn’t.’

  I wasn’t surprised. ‘Presumably Isabel knew this when she joined them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luís. ‘I tried to talk her out of it, but that probably only egged her on. She said that it was a great career opportunity for her and that she would be completely honest. And I think she has been. She has a good reputation in Brazil.’

  The fire crackled and spat. It was almost totally dark now, and the room was illuminated by the glow of the flames.

  ‘I’m going to resign when I get back to London,’ I said.

  ‘Are you?’ Luís straightened in his chair. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t like banking. Or maybe I just don’t like Dekker. I had decided before I came out here with Isabel.’

  Luís didn’t answer. We lapsed into silence again. Our thoughts drifted back to Isabel.

  ‘We can save her favela deal,’ Luís said.

  ‘How?’

  For the first time in days Luís smiled. It was a small smile. The way he twitched the corners of his mouth reminded me of Isabel. ‘Bocci is an upstart in the Rio media world. I have friends with bigger papers. We can turn Ricardo’s strategy against him. It will hurt him. And it will be something we can do for Isabel.’

  21

  I went into work with trepidation on Monday morning. But there were smiles and nods, sympathy, questions delicately put. In a way it felt as if I was returning home. That wouldn’t last long.