The Predator

by Michael Ridpath

  Tamara could be rude; everyone knew that. But she was usually funny as well. She had a wit that could be cutting, but she didn't really mean the things she said. Or at least that was what Chris had assumed. But she should have been nicer to his friends; she could have made an effort.

  And they were his friends. He liked Duncan. And although he hadn't known Alex and Lenka for more than a few weeks, he liked them, too. Of course, he had known Tamara much longer, and he knew he had been right to defend her against Lenka. But he hadn't liked to choose between these new friends and his girlfriend, and he resented Tamara for making him do it.

  He remembered Lenka's words, that Tamara was not good enough for him, and smiled. He was sure Lenka believed it, but he knew she was wrong. He was lucky to have someone like Tamara. She was attractive, she was fun, she had class. And she was good in bed. Chris was not as experienced as he would have liked to be in that regard, but he knew sex with Tamara was great. He hoped she would come over to New York again.

  When he arrived back at the apartment, Duncan was waiting for him. Chris hadn't seen him since Friday evening, and for the first time he wondered how Duncan had managed to avoid him so successfully all weekend.

  'Fancy a wee bevy?' Duncan said nervously.

  Chris smiled. 'OK.'

  They went to the Irish bar around the corner. They avoided anything but very small talk until the Guinness was on the table in front of them.

  Duncan took a deep breath. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

  'No, I'm sorry,' said Chris.

  'I shouldn't have mouthed off that stuff about British merchant banks. It was stupid. I knew it would wind up Tamara.'

  'And it did.'

  Duncan coughed. 'Yes, it did.' He drank some more of his beer. 'Look, I know Tamara doesn't like me, and I don't suspect she ever will, but you've been a good mate to me, especially here, and I don't want to mess that up.'

  Chris smiled. 'Don't worry about it, Duncan. Tamara can be awkward sometimes. I'm sorry you had to take that shit from her. I shouldn't have told her about the Bond Math exam.'

  'The sad thing was, what she said was true,' said Duncan. 'I can't hack the training programme.'

  'Now, no whining, Duncan. Anyway, where were you all weekend?'

  Duncan sipped his beer. He tried to suppress a grin, but he failed. In the end, he gave up.

  'You didn't?' asked Chris.

  'I did.'

  'What, after the party?'

  'Yep.'

  'Wow.'

  'Yep.'

  'Don't look so smug,' said Chris. 'I want details. I want details.'

  'Well, after we left, Lenka was pretty upset. In fact, we both were. So we just walked in silence for a while. Then we started talking about you and about Tamara. And then we were talking about other things.' Duncan paused, a faint smile on his lips. 'We got to Columbus Circle and started looking for a cab, and then I said I'd walk her back to her apartment.'

  'In the Village?'

  'That's right.'

  'But that's miles!'

  'Yes. But it didn't seem like it. I mean, it seemed to take for ever, but we didn't get tired or anything. It was very romantic. Then we got to her street and she asked me up to her apartment. She said I couldn't just turn round and walk all the way back.'

  'And then?'

  'And then . . .' Duncan smiled.

  'You have to tell me.'

  'No, I don't.'

  'OK, I suppose you don't,' admitted Chris. 'But presumably you spent the weekend at her place?'

  'It seemed safer there than in our apartment.'

  'That's true.'

  'Didn't you notice I wasn't there?'

  'No, I suppose I didn't. I just thought you were skulking in your room, or something.' Chris took a gulp of beer. Duncan and Lenka. He liked that. 'Congratulations,' he said.

  'Thank you. We'd better keep it quiet from the others on the programme, though. You never know what Calhoun would think.'

  'Sod him,' said Chris. 'But all right, I'll keep it quiet. Ian's got to find out, though. And Alex and Eric.'

  'If they do, they do,' said Duncan. 'Oh, by the way, Lenka says she's sorry. About what she said to Tamara.'

  'That's OK.'

  'She says she stands by what she said, she just shouldn't have said it.'

  Chris smiled. 'Tell her that's OK, too.'

  5

  Summer came. It was hot in New York in June and July, so hot that it was unpleasant to venture outside. The Brits were not dressed for it: their Marks and Spencer wool suits were the wrong clothing for the climate. The humidity was so bad that after walking more than a block they would find themselves drenched in sweat. The classroom was deliciously cool, but the subway was a sweltering hell. The air-conditioning on the Lexington line wasn't up to a carriage full of sweaty commuters. Sometimes Chris, Duncan and Ian would bail out at Forty-Second Street and grab a cold beer in a nearby bar, before returning below ground for the second leg. Of course, Lenka managed to stay cool at all times, in outfits that Abby Hollis eyed suspiciously, but couldn't quite bring herself to comment on.

  The work kept coming. In addition to Waldern's Capital Markets, which seemed to be a never-ending subject, they were given courses in Corporate Finance, Accounting, International Economics, Credit Analysis and Ethics. They were spoken to by people across the length and breadth of Bloomfield Weiss, from Tokyo to Chicago, from Global Custody to Equity Derivatives. The pace came in fits and starts, but the pressure never let up, George Calhoun saw to that.

  Much to his surprise, Chris found that he actually enjoyed the course. As the concepts became clearer to him, and linked together to form a coherent whole, his interest grew. He particularly liked listening to the traders talking. These were popular sessions with the trainees: if Bloomfield Weiss was anything, it was a trading house. The staking of billions of dollars, the big men with big mouths, the macho language of violent sexual acts and physical disfigurement, all attracted a certain type of trainee. But that wasn't what appealed to Chris. He was fascinated by the shifting relationships of markets, how supply and demand fed through to price movement, and how risk capital was managed so that losses were cut and profits allowed to run. He was less interested in the tall tales of Cash Callaghan, a top salesman from the London office, who bragged about 'whippin' and drivin' those bonds', and more interested in the quiet deliberations of Seymour Tanner, a twenty-nine-year-old star of the Proprietary Desk, who was rumoured to have made the firm two hundred million dollars the year before. For the first time, Chris was beginning to feel at home at Bloomfield Weiss. There was a job there that he could do, if they would let him do it.

  George Calhoun was eager to crank up the competition. He wanted to fire up his trainees, make them hungry, give them something to aim for. So he put up a table of rankings, from one to sixty, or rather fifty-eight, following the departure of Denny Engel and Roger Masden. The rankings were based on the amalgamated scores from the various tests that were given out during the course. To add a bit of spice, he had drawn a big red line between number forty-five and number forty-six, the infamous bottom quartile. And he also announced that the top three trainees would receive a bonus at the end of the programme.

  At number one spot was Rudy Moss. At number two, Eric Astle. And at number three, much to Calhoun's fury, was Lenka. At the other end, Duncan was hovering around fifty; in other words in the bottom quartile, but within striking distance of escaping it. After his poor showing in the Bond Math exam Ian was at forty-two, but rising strongly. Alex was two places higher at forty, and Chris, to his surprise was at twenty-five. Despite the disparity in abilities, or perhaps because of it, the study group continued to work together. Eric and Lenka's success was a source of pride for them all, and they all wanted to ensure that Duncan and Alex ended the course above the cut-off line.

  There was one course, though, that Chris didn't enjoy. Ethics. Ian called it Corporate Hypocrisy, and the name stuck. It was a cynical attempt to deal with the repe
rcussions that Bloomfield Weiss had suffered both from the Phoenix Prosperity scandal and the prosecution of the drug-dealing salesmen. The contrast between Martin Krohl, who took the Ethics course, and the succession of managing directors who described in great detail how they ripped the faces off their clients would have been funny, if it was not so seriously pursued. Ian came top in the exam, which wasn't really a surprise. He was an intelligent man, Ethics had not a number in sight, and Ian's innate cynicism was perfectly suited to the subject as taught at Bloomfield Weiss. Lenka failed. She explained that she had needed to 'clarify' some of her answers and she suspected that Krohl hadn't liked that. The irony of Ian coming top and Lenka coming near the bottom of a Bloomfield Weiss Ethics exam was not lost on Chris and Duncan, who both felt slightly ashamed at how well they had done.

  Duncan and Lenka's relationship prospered. They were very professional about it. There was no hint of anything in class or in front of the other trainees. Even when they were with Eric, Alex, Chris and Ian, they behaved more like good friends than a couple. They would often sit next to each other in a bar or restaurant, and there was a lot of good-natured teasing, but there was none of the all-exclusive inward-looking intimacy with which a couple can sometimes disrupt a group of friends.

  But they did spend a lot of time together. Duncan usually stayed with Lenka in the Village, often arriving back after midnight, or at weekends, not at all. They went away for the Memorial Day weekend together, to Cape Cod. Duncan wasn't getting much sleep, but he was thriving on it. He was happy, and the self-pity about his work, which had begun to irritate Chris and Ian, disappeared. Lenka, too, seemed happy with life, although for her this seemed a much more usual state of affairs. Ian would occasionally wonder what on earth she saw in Duncan, but even he couldn't complain at Duncan's good spirits.

  Besides, Ian was enjoying himself. He would often venture out alone around nine or ten in the evening. Occasionally Chris would be startled on the way to the bathroom the following morning by a strange woman. During the course of the summer, he saw four or five of these. Most were American, but one of them was an au pair from France. She was the only one who Chris saw more than once. They were all attractive.

  Chris wasn't surprised that Ian's success with women, which had been marked at Oxford, was even more apparent in New York. He made full use of his accent, and for some reason that Chris couldn't fathom, women seemed to find his arrogance attractive rather than off-putting. None of those who came back with him in the middle of the night thought they were at the beginning of a beautiful relationship. But, Chris reasoned, perhaps that was why they were there in the first place. Ian's success was all the more remarkable because the AIDS scare was still very much alive in New York at that time. Ian thought the risk to heterosexuals was overrated and presumably his new friends agreed with him. Duncan became extra careful with the washing up.

  Alex was struggling. His mother was ill. Very ill. She had leukaemia, and it was getting worse. He had kept it quiet from everyone apart from Eric, but when her condition changed from stable to deteriorating, Alex felt he had to spend as much time with her as he could. She was entombed in a hospital near her home in New Brunswick. He went there every weekend and often after class in the evening. He took as much time off as he could but, not surprisingly, Calhoun was unsympathetic. Alex pushed it as far as he dared, but eventually Calhoun made it clear that one more day off, and Alex was out.

  Alex's father had died three years before, and his brother had taken off around the world soon afterwards. He was now working as crew on a sailing boat in Australia. To Alex's disgust, his brother said he wouldn't be able to make it back to the States to see his mother. So the burden of responsibility fell on Alex, who took it hard. She was in pain whenever she wasn't pumped up with drugs, and Alex felt her pain. It was difficult flogging out there so often to see someone who could barely speak and who was obviously in such agony. He hated being with her and he hated being away from her. Lenka accompanied him on a couple of these visits and that seemed to cheer him up. But his work suffered, and he slipped to take Duncan's place in that fourth quartile.

  Tamara made it over to America one more time. She came for the Fourth of July weekend. This time, she flew direct to Washington, and Chris took the Amtrak to meet her there. They had a great weekend. They saw the fireworks on Capitol Hill, listened to the 1812 Overture, and explored the sweltering city and its restaurants. Chris felt much more relaxed: Tamara was able to make unkind comments about Americans without anyone he knew hearing her, and he didn't have to worry about her insulting his friends.

  Duncan's happiness didn't last the summer. It was shattered on a hot and humid Saturday night, two weeks before the end of the programme. Chris was sleeping fitfully, entangled in a single sheet on his bed, when he was awakened by the crash of the apartment door slamming. He glanced at the alarm clock. One fifteen a.m. He heard a grunt. Duncan. He rolled over. Duncan was usually quiet when he came back from Lenka's. As he surfaced from sleep, Chris realized something else was odd: Duncan usually stayed at Lenka's on Saturdays. There was no reason for him to come back to their apartment in the middle of the night.

  A loud bang. Duncan swearing. Another grunt. A crash of a chair falling over. This did not sound good. Chris crawled out of bed and pulled on his dressing gown. Duncan was in the hallway, swaying. His face was white in the bright hallway light.

  'Are you OK, Duncan?'

  Duncan blew out his cheeks and focused on Chris. 'I've just had a wee drink,' he said slowly. 'Going to bed. Don't feel too good.'

  He was smashed out of his brain. Chris didn't like the way Duncan's chest was heaving, as though he were trying to keep something down.

  'Let's go to the bathroom, Duncan,' said Chris, grabbing hold of him.

  'No. Bed,' said Duncan, but he allowed himself to be led away by Chris. As soon as he saw the lavatory bowl, he lunged at it. Chris held on to him as he emptied his stomach.

  He heard Ian behind him. 'Jesus,' he said. 'Stupid bugger. I hope he's going to clear that up.'

  'I don't think he'll be able to.'

  'Well, I'm not doing it,' said Ian, and he retreated to his room, shutting the door firmly.

  Chris cleaned up the lavatory, and Duncan. He pulled off most of his clothes and laid him on his bed. Duncan fell asleep instantly.

  Late the next morning, Chris looked into Duncan's room. He was lying on his back with his eyes open. The room stank of old alcohol.

  'How are you feeling?' Chris asked.

  'Horrible,' said Duncan in a cracked voice. 'You couldn't get me some water, could you, Chris?'

  Chris returned with a large glassful, which Duncan drank. 'God, my head hurts.'

  'I've never seen you that drunk before,' said Chris.

  Duncan shook his head. 'I don't even remember coming back here. Did you help me get into bed?'

  Chris nodded.

  'Thanks.' Duncan ran his tongue round his mouth. 'Yuk. I threw up last night, didn't I?'

  'You did. What happened?'

  'We had a row.'

  'You and Lenka?'

  'Yes.'

  Chris waited. He knew Duncan would tell him.

  Duncan sighed and winced. 'This headache is horrible. It's over, Chris.'

  'No! Are you sure?'

  'Am I sure? Of course I'm sure.'

  'Why? What happened?'

  Duncan paused. 'It's my fault. I pushed her too hard.'

  'About what?'

  He sighed. 'I suggested we live together. The programme finishes in two weeks, and I couldn't face the thought of going back to London and leaving her here. I realized that she's the most important thing in my life. My career at Bloomfield Weiss is screwed, that's obvious. So I told her I'd quit and live with her in New York. It should be easy enough to find another job on Wall Street. Or else she could live with me in London. Or we could both go to Czechoslovakia. I didn't care. I just didn't want to leave her.'

  'And what did she say?'
/>   'Nothing at first. She went quiet, as though she was thinking. But I knew right away that I'd blown it.' Duncan paused, and winced again, whether from his head, or the memory of his conversation the night before, Chris couldn't tell. 'Then she said she'd been thinking about the end of the programme too. She said she liked me, but she didn't want the kind of commitment that went with living with someone. She said it would be better for both of us if we split up now.'

  'Oh, dear.'

  'You're telling me. Then I lost it. I told her I loved her. I do love her, Chris. And I thought that if I told her that, and really meant it, she'd have to say she loved me. But she didn't. She just went completely still. She didn't say what she thought about me. She just said that it'd be best if we didn't see each other any more.'

  Duncan took a sip of his water.

  'I couldn't bear the thought of that. I only have two more weeks in New York; I want to be with Lenka for that whole time. So I told her we should keep seeing each other and forget about the future for now. But she wouldn't have any of it. I kept telling her, but she wouldn't listen. In the end she more or less threw me out.'

  'And you went drinking?'

  'I couldn't believe what had happened. I still can't. We have something very special, she and I. She's the most marvellous person I've ever met. I'm not going to meet anyone else like her again, am I?' He looked at Chris, demanding an answer.

  'Lenka is unique,' said Chris carefully.

  'Of course she is,' said Duncan. 'One moment, I think we're going to live our lives together, and the next . . .'

  'It must have been tough.'

  'It was. It is. Oh, God.' To Chris's embarrassment, tears began to run down Duncan's face. Chris had no idea what to say. Lenka knew her own mind, and if she had called it off, it was off. Duncan would just have to get over it. But that would be no easy matter, Chris knew.

  'When you feel up to it, we'll go for a walk in the park. We can talk about it,' said Chris.

  'That would be good,' said Duncan. 'I'll be up in a minute.'