Читать книгу: «The Money Makers»

Summer 1998
1

As morning broke over London four young people awoke to face the day.

First was Matthew, who, as on so many mornings, awoke to find himself in a bed not his own. Beside him there slept an attractive girl, naked. He brushed her hair away from her face. Alison? Amanda? No, Amelia. He’d met her at a party the night before and they’d left together. She was pretty but mediocre in bed, he remembered. No, that was unfair. It was Matthew who’d been off form. The will had got to him, as had Zack’s aggressive response. Amelia had been just fine, and her skin looked lovely in the morning light. Matthew tweaked the duvet up over her bare shoulder and crept out of bed.

He dressed silently in front of the mirror. His light fluffy hair needed to be damped and combed, but he didn’t want to run the bathroom taps in case he woke the sleeper. He patted his hair ineffectually into place. He looked like a stubbly choirboy with untidy hair. Matthew grimaced at his reflection but it didn’t help. It just made him look like a sulky choirboy.

He crept downstairs and found a bit of paper and a pen. He searched a bit further and found an envelope in the dustbin addressed to Miss Amelia Somebody-or-other. Good. Amelia, then, not Amanda.

‘Dear Amelia,’ he wrote. ‘Thank you for a wonderful night last night. I thought you were absolutely terrific. Sorry I had to rush off this morning – urgent business elsewhere, and I didn’t want to wake you. All the very best, Matthew.’

He was practised in such notes and had stopped signing off with ‘love from’ or ‘we must get together again’. His one-night stands were mostly with partners who were no more looking for true love than he was, but on occasion he had been caught out and the word ‘love’ had come back to haunt him. So now he aimed to be generous, warm-hearted but final. As far as he could remember, Amelia wouldn’t have a problem with that, but in any case she didn’t have his phone number. He closed the front door quietly and walked across the park towards his Chelsea flat.

Once there, he showered properly and dressed again with care. He was a good-looking chap, Matthew, and fussy as a showgirl over his appearance. He got himself some coffee, a pad of paper and a pen. Across the top of the page he wrote in block capitals: ‘Plan: One million pounds in three years.’ He underlined it.

Then he paused. He wasn’t going to list all the things he was missing, he believed in a positive approach. Underneath his heading he wrote, ‘Assets: temporary job on Madison trading floor.’ Then he was stuck. He had no money, no qualifications, and his job was already half-lost. He thought for a long time.

At school he had always been Zack’s younger brother. Zack had seldom appeared to work, but ended up with a string of A grades and a scholarship to Oxford. Matthew had worked hard, his exam results were peppered with B grades and worse, and his teachers thought him lucky to have won his place at Cambridge. Never once had Zack made things easier by showing humility or understanding. Matthew had a point to prove, and prove it he would.

His coffee went cold. He got himself another and thought some more. Eventually, he picked up his pen again and wrote: ‘Plan A: Get a permanent job at Madison. Become the best trader ever to hit the trading floor. Get a million pounds in bonuses – after tax!! Comment: very hard to achieve but worth a try.’

Then shaking his head, he continued: ‘Plan B: Get a permanent job at Madison. Become a very skilful trader. Get some big bonuses. Then –’ But he broke off. He knew what he had in mind but it would be foolish to put it into writing. It was going to be a challenging three years.

2

Just as Matthew was throwing away his sheet of paper, his elder brother Zack was at the office getting one out. He’d been happy enough to fling down a challenge to his brothers yesterday, but this morning it didn’t seem so smart. A week earlier Zack had told his senior audit partner to shove his head somewhere it would neither reach nor fit, there to entertain himself by auditing his kidneys. Predictably, the partner had stormed off, put in a request for Zack’s dismissal, and the firm’s disciplinary machinery ground into action. The final review meeting was tomorrow and it was a near certainty that Zack would get the sack.

Accountants don’t become millionaires. They may, of course, if they work hard, do well, and save prudently, but not in three years. Not aged twenty-six. On the other hand, ex-philosophy students with no job, no references, and no capital aren’t exactly in the millionaire bracket themselves. Zack needed a job – a proper job – but to do that he needed not to be fired. Scowling and gritting his teeth, he wrote out a grovelling letter of apology. Zack blamed ‘my extreme grief following the death of my father’ and begged ‘to be given a second chance to show my deep commitment to the firm’.

Zack tucked the letter into an envelope, addressed it, then pretended to spit on it. Along with tact, modesty, patience, kindness and a few other virtues, the art of apology was one Zack had yet to master. He dumped the envelope into the internal mail system and snapped at a secretary to check it was collected and delivered. That was that. No more to be done on that front.

Meantime, there was a larger problem to be solved. How was Zack to make his million? Right now he couldn’t say, but there was only one place to try: the City of London, one of the world’s great financial centres, and home to more banks than any other city in the world. But how to gain entry? His accountancy firm would give him a terrible reference, and he had nothing else to show except a failed doctorate and a useless philosophy degree. Good banks don’t hire losers.

Zack scowled again, adding to the natural intensity of his narrow face. Matthew was the best looking of the three brothers, but many women found Zack’s darkly brooding looks irresistible. Matthew was always baffled that Zack didn’t appear to notice, let alone take proper advantage, his only serious romance to date being a long and stormy one with a girl at college. Zack picked up the phone and dialled an Oxford number.

‘Ichabod Bell speaking.’

‘Ichabod, it’s Zack. Zack Gradley.’

‘Zack, my boy, nice to hear from you.’ Zack’s old philosophy tutor was genuinely enthusiastic. ‘What can I do for you? Are you coming back to finish your doctorate? I can’t believe you’re going to be a godforsaken accountant all your life.’

‘No, actually, I wanted to ask a favour.’ And Zack explained what was on his mind.

Ichabod Bell thought for a moment in silence, then said, ‘Come to dinner in two weeks. College High Table. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’

‘Who?’

‘Jolly good. Saturday, in two weeks, then. Seven thirty for eight. Look forward to it.’

‘Who am I meeting?’

‘Oh, you’ll love him. Give you a chance to catch up on all your rowing gossip. Glittering mornings on the water, the thrill of the race, all that stuff.’

‘Ichabod, you know perfectly well I’ve never sat in a rowing boat in my life.’

‘Nonsense, Zack, you’ve been a lifelong fan of the sport. Nobody quite like you for memorising race statistics and all that rubbish. Just come to dinner.’

And he rang off. Zack had no idea what Bell was planning. All he knew was that he had two weeks to become expert in the noble sport of rowing.

3

George was woken shortly before midday by a loud thumping. He tried ignoring it but the noise wouldn’t go away. He pulled on a dressing gown and went to the door.

A group of beautiful young people stood in the hall outside. Beautifully dressed, beautifully tanned, slim, athletic and many-accented, they were among the wealthiest, laziest, most easily bored young people in Europe, George’s friends of the last eleven years. A petite, bird-like French girl headed the deputation.

‘Georges!’ she exclaimed, using the French pronunciation of his name. ‘You aren’t even up and we’re already late. You need to be ready this moment or we’ll miss the races. Papa’s horse is running at two-thirty, remember.’

‘Oh God, Kiki. Is it Deauville today? I’d completely forgotten.’

In his previous life four centuries ago – or was it only four days? – George had suggested chartering a plane to take them to the races at the French casino town of Deauville. The plane had been due to leave at midday, so they were already holding it up and incurring extra charges.

‘But Georges, of course it is Deauville today. And we are due at the casino this evening. You can’t have forgotten because, look, I have remembered, and I have even got up early, and I never get up early and I never remember anything, so you must have remembered, except you haven’t.’

Kiki’s illogical proof tumbled out in a single breathless flurry. Her dark brown hair fell down her slim neck in artful wisps, positively inviting male touch. She wasn’t beautiful, Kiki, but she was pretty.

And she spoke the truth. It was a minor miracle that she had remembered an appointment and been ready on time, something George had never known before. Damn! He fancied Kiki desperately and had arranged the trip mostly to be with her. If she had got herself ready, did that mean she returned his affection? Possibly, possibly not. But if he jumped on the plane to Deauville he could hardly get out of paying his share, and the last thing he needed was an evening of champagne and roulette at five hundred francs a chip.

‘Kiki, I’m so sorry. I’ve been terribly ill. Stomach upset. I don’t think I’m up to flying. You go on anyway. I’ll come another time.’

‘Oh, poor Georges! You don’t look well at all. Very pale and your hair is all stuck down one way and sticking up the other way. You should be in bed.’

‘I was in bed.’

George didn’t look ill, or at least no iller than normal. Of the four kids, he’d drawn the short straw in the genetic sweepstakes and ended up every inch his father’s son. He had Bernard Gradley’s pale English skin, his piggy little eyes, his stockiness, his uncontrollable ginger hair. The sick-as-a-dog look came naturally.

‘Well you must go straight back and eat a lot of chicken broth.’

‘OK, Kiki. Have a good time.’

Kiki left in a swirl of the young and beautiful. A handsome young man, playboy son of an Italian billionaire, positioned himself next to her as they left. George crawled back into bed, pulled the covers over his head and groaned.

4

And as George lay in bed groaning, Josephine was making grunting sounds of her own. She had rummaged round in the attic of her mother’s Kilburn house and found something she’d remembered playing with as a child. She grunted as she lugged the heavy typewriter downstairs into the kitchen. It weighed a ton and the attic had covered her in dust.

Never mind. There are worse things in life than dust. She sat down at the ancient keyboard and opened a battered textbook. ‘ASDF are the home keys for the left hand.’ She spread her fingertips over the dusty keys, thumbs resting lightly on the space bar. It’s a new feeling, but one she’ll need to get used to. She can forget about A Levels. She can forget about Oxbridge.

It is Wednesday 15 July 1998. There are three years less one day to go until Bernard Gradley’s deadline: 1095 days.

5

Thursday morning. The red lights of digital clocks display the times around the world’s financial centres. News messages roll incessantly across a dot matrix wall panel while the glow from banks of computer screens fights back the dark. Every now and then a phone rings briefly in the silence. But apart from a few early-morning cleaners there is no one here to check the screens or answer the phones. No one except Matthew. It is five fifteen am.

Matthew was attached to a group of four traders dealing in the smaller European currencies: the Swiss franc, the lira, the Dutch guilder, the Swedish krona, the peseta, a few others. Between them his four traders mustered six passports, thirteen languages, and a shared passion for dealing.

Matthew’s job was to support the group in any way it wanted. He was meant to forage for information, calculate spreadsheets, run errands, and get the coffees. So far the only job he’d done at all was getting the coffees. He couldn’t stand the trashy coffees from the vending machines, so four times a day he went to the Blue Mountain Coffee Company’s boutique to get the world’s most heavenly cappuccinos at £1.80 a cup. If it weren’t for this unaccustomed service, the traders would have had Matthew fired weeks before. As it was, they rated his survival chances at just about zero. As Luigi Cuneberti, the Swiss-Italian who traded Swiss francs and lire, put it: ‘Matteo, we give you a job when Italy has paid its national debt and the lira is worth more than the dollar.’

That needed to change.

All banks have the same information from Reuters, Bloomberg, Telerate. A million computer screens can be accessed with a few key strokes. Data is updated every second, news reported as it happens. It’s not information that makes the difference but judgement. And judgement requires the right facts in the right format at the right time.

Matthew set to work. He scrolled through the overnight news stories on Reuters, printed off the full list of headlines plus the handful of stories he thought important. Next, he called the bank’s main Far Eastern offices: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney. Some markets were quiet, others not. After every call, he made detailed notes.

Then, he went out on to the street to an international paper stand, where he bought eight European newspapers plus the European edition of the Wall Street Journal. He wasn’t fluent in any language other than English, but he had spent enough time skiing in Courcheval and Zermatt, enough time in the bars of Tuscany and the beaches of Mallorca, and enough time with girls in all these places to get the gist of what he read. He made clippings of the articles he thought important, and added them to his growing stack.

He looked at his watch. Six forty-five am. He had more to do, but was out of time. He collected up his work and ran it through the copier five times: once for each of his traders, once for himself.

As the pages copied, Matthew realised three things.

First, he had absorbed a surprising amount since being at the bank, despite his weeks of indolence. Second, there was an almost infinite amount of research he could do. Today’s effort was only a start. And third, he had eight weeks of his summer job remaining. At the end of those weeks, he had to convince Madison not just to hire him, but to hire him right away without waiting for him to complete his degree. That was unheard of. But if Madison turned him down and forced him to return to Cambridge in October, he’d have failed to meet his father’s goal before he’d even started.

6

Through the glass doors at the end of the room, Luigi came in. He exchanged insults with the Italians working in fixed income and blew a kiss at a secretary he was trying to seduce. Then he arrived at his desk, banged down a coffee and bagel, and stared at Matthew.

‘Santa Maria!’ said Luigi. ‘You have the time wrong, my friend, no? Or a brain disease? It is serious, I hope? Hey, what is this?’ Luigi held the neatly stacked papers on his desk at arms’ length.

‘It looks like work. It smells like work,’ he said, sniffing, ‘but, there is nobody here except Matteo.’ Luigi’s face grew sombre. He swept some clutter off his desk and knelt on it. He raised his eyes to heaven and added, ‘Grazie a Dio! A miracle has happened and I am unworthy.’ He got back to his feet, scanning the package more seriously now.

‘You’ve spoken with Tokyo about the trade surplus overshoot?’

‘Yes,’ said Matthew. ‘The figures look enormous and are well above the consensus, but the Tokyo market seems to have shrugged it off. Our economist out there tells me that if you dig into the data, it’s mostly one-off items. There’s a reasonable summary in the Wall Street Journal actually.’

Luigi stared at Matthew, then flipped through his package to the article which was highlighted. His eyes scanned it briefly.

‘Hmm. So no issue then.’

Matthew hesitated a moment. ‘I’m not sure that’s right,’ he said. ‘If I made out the headlines properly, I think the Italian press is a bit more excitable.’

Luigi followed his train of thought. It wasn’t the data itself which mattered, it was other people’s interpretation of it. If Italian investors got the wrong end of the stick because of bad reporting, then they might misjudge their trading strategy until they wised up. Luigi turned to the articles from the Italian press. Again, he scanned the articles in a few seconds.

‘Interesting. I know the Banca di Roma needs to close out a short yen position at the moment. Be interesting to see how they react.’ Luigi meant that the Banca di Roma needed to buy some yen. If it thought the price of yen was going to soar, they’d want to buy quickly before the price had moved.

Luigi was a good trader. He scanned the rest of the documents and picked up his phone. He wouldn’t put it down for more than a few minutes until the end of the day. Right now, he was checking facts, sensing attitudes, exchanging banter with traders and investors, trying to sense the mood of the market. One idea always leads to a dozen others, and when Luigi picked up an interesting lead, he pursued it. He said not another word to Matthew.

The market was in full swing by eight thirty by which time the other traders – Anders, Cristina, and Jean-François – were in and busy. Each of them reacted the way Luigi had to the new-look Matthew. But they were restrained in their praise, waiting to see how long his new work ethic would last.

Luigi called the Banca di Roma, letting the conversation play from his speakerphone. The two men bantered briefly before switching to business.

‘Hey, you better be getting out of that giant short position you’ve got on the yen. Did you see the trade numbers? You’re going to get toasted today unless some kindly person takes you out of it.’

‘Bullshit, Luigi,’ said the Banca di Roma guy. ‘We couldn’t care less about the yen. We don’t have a short position and anyway a month’s data is neither here nor there. The Tokyo market didn’t move much.’

This already told Luigi a lot. If Banca di Roma really didn’t care what happened to the yen, their trader wouldn’t have prompted Luigi to keep the discussion going. Luigi now had a choice. He hesitated so briefly that Matthew, who was following the conversation intently, only just noticed.

‘Amico mio,’ said Luigi, ‘the market didn’t move because the data was bullshit.’ He quickly summarised the reasons why the yen hadn’t moved. ‘If you try to get out of your position too quickly, my friends in the market here will stiff you. You do need to close out your position because there are more big numbers coming out in Tokyo and Rome next week and God knows where rates will be by Friday. But you need to go slowly and use your head.’

The Banca di Roma guy almost audibly relaxed. He asked a couple more questions about last night’s number and then a whole lot more about how to exit his position, which was in fact very large. Luigi talked him through it and promised to stay in touch through the day. Then a call came in on another line and Luigi hung up to take it.

Matthew spent the day doing what he could to sift out the nuggets which mattered from the flood of information which roared through the bank. As he picked them out, he made sure that his increasingly frenzied team of traders got them quickly and clearly. He worked so intently that it had got to eleven thirty without him going out for the coffees. When Luigi noticed, he picked his half-eaten bagel from the dustbin and threw it accurately at Matthew’s head.

‘You’re still only here for the coffees.’

At five thirty that afternoon the market fell quiet. The frenzy which had raged across London for nine hours had moved on to New York. New York would pass the baton to Chicago and San Francisco. Then the West Coast would hand the baton on to Tokyo and just a little later to Hong Kong and Singapore. The Asians kept long and lonely watch as the sun rolled over the endless miles until once again European traders woke up to play the everlasting game.

Matthew helped his traders tidy up after the day, making sure each trade was properly documented with a complete and legible trading note. Thanks to his help, Matthew’s team finished its paperwork fifteen minutes after the close of the market. All around other traders were cursing and fidgeting as they grappled with the unwelcome slips of paper.

Luigi had to rush off to a dinner date, or so he said. The crude comments thrown at him by Anders and Cristina suggested that anything he wanted to do in the hour and a half before dinner time was likely to be done lying down, and not by himself. Matthew grabbed Luigi before he left.

‘I’d like to ask you a question. Why didn’t you stiff the Banca di Roma guy earlier on today? I could see he’d have let you if you’d wanted to.’

‘Matteo, Matteo,’ said Luigi, patting his cheek, ‘if he wanted to get out of his position quickly, he would have tried to spread his trades among as many banks as possible. We’d all have stiffed him, but he’d have felt better about it that way. As it was, he trusted me. I did maybe sixty percent of his trades today at a rate which was fair to me and fair to him. He is grateful to me because he was scared this morning and I didn’t shit on him when I could have done. The Banca di Roma does a lot of business, and right now they love me. Signor Matteo, you can make a lot of money by stiffing people, but you only make it once. Give your clients a good service and they come back.’

Luigi started to walk off to his ‘dinner date’, then turned and added with a wink, ‘And you never know. If you stiff even your best clients perhaps once a year, they are probably too stupid to notice.’

7

Ichabod Bell greeted Zack with a glass of sherry.

‘Decided to drop all that tripe about money, I take it. Damned if I can name a single ancient Greek millionaire, but I can think of a good few philosophers whose credit is still good today. Anyway, blast you, you’re nowhere near good enough to make the grade. You want to be an accountant, right? I forget. No, silly me. Too exciting. An actuary. Much better. Less stressful. Very reliable pension arrangements. How’s your rowing?’

‘I’ve studied nothing else for two weeks. Am I allowed to know why?’

Ichabod ignored him.

‘Gong’s already sounded. Let’s go in to dinner. Mind you taste the wine. Tonight’s a fund-raiser and the Dean’s serving only the best.’

Upstairs in the dining hall, panelled in six-hundred-year-old oak, Zack found his place in between a history lecturer he had liked when a student, and a Sir Robert Grossman, whose name rang a bell but nothing more. Once everyone was seated, the chaplain rose.

‘Surgete,’ he said in Latin, indicating with his hands that the company should rise for grace.

Everybody did so except for Ichabod, a fierce atheist. A long Latin grace followed. Zack took the opportunity, as did most others, to squint downwards at the menu card on his plate. Trout, beef, chocolate mousse, cheese. The ingredients would be good enough, but Zack knew that the college kitchens were of the traditional British school. The chef’s idea of a luxurious gravy was to stir a bit of wine in with the stock granules. Vegetables would be boiled into surrender, the beef roasted into submission. At least the wine would be first-rate.

The first two courses passed in agreeable banter with the history lecturer, who brought Zack up-to-date on college politics and scandal. As the plates were being cleared, Zack turned to the man on his left, Grossman, who had also turned.

‘Well, young man, are you enjoying the wine?’

Zack hated nothing more than a patronising old fool, but tonight he was on his best behaviour.

‘The wine’s great,’ he said. Then, a snippet from his two weeks’ research suddenly falling like a silver penny into his lap, he added: ‘Do I remember you used to row for the college eight?’

Grossman was instantly transfixed.

‘Yes, indeed! Captained it, actually. We had a damn good season and damn near went Head of the River. You’re a rower are you? Best sport in the world, I always say. Clever of you to remember my name. Still, I suppose I did have quite a reputation in my day.’

Rowing was the great love of Grossman’s life. At Oxford he’d been a bit too dumb to make it academically and a bit too ugly to have much luck romantically. In a bright and talented world, Grossman felt marooned. Then he discovered rowing. Rowing gave him friends and an activity at which he excelled. In his memory at least, his time at Oxford had been a succession of bright mornings and golden afternoons, racing triumphs and disasters, drinking feats, puking and songs.

Zack left his previous conversation partner dangling as Grossman rattled away like a racing commentator. He and Zack talked rowing right through to the end of dinner, comparing techniques, race statistics, competitors, anecdotes. Zack boasted a photographic memory, and his research bore up easily under the barrage. Pudding, cheese, wines and port passed in an increasingly alcoholic haze. Rowers, it seemed, were heavy drinkers.

When the time came to move downstairs for the cigars and more drinks, the Dean appeared silently at Grossman’s elbow. Time for a chat about leaking roofs and vacant fellowships. Grossman understood the hint, and, firing a few last sentences at Zack, walked off in the Dean’s wake. Zack grabbed Ichabod as they went downstairs.

‘OK. I’ve talked rowing for two hours without a break and I still don’t know why. Who is Grossman, anyway? And I warn you, I’m three quarters dead with boredom.’

Ichabod grinned. ‘I knew you’d love him.’

Back in the senior common room they helped themselves to cigars and more alcohol. Zack’s head was spinning. He was glugging down wines worth twenty pounds a glass, enjoying them but not tasting them.

‘Grossman is your future employer,’ said Ichabod. ‘Deputy Chief Executive at Coburg’s, the merchant bank. A fading light there, but still a big hitter. Worst rowing bore I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a few. I’ll never understand how second-raters get to the top in business. It must be surprisingly easy.’

Zack looked at the gentle don in his corduroy jacket. Bell’s financial acumen stretched no further than remembering (most of the time) where he’d left his wallet. It was hard to picture him as an international mogul. The pair chatted a little longer. Then the Dean came into the common room with Grossman in tow. The Dean looked serious, while Grossman beamed in delight. The Dean had the happy gift of being able to take a very large cheque from people and leave them feeling like they’d won the lottery.

Ichabod left Zack and walked over to Grossman. Zack felt two pairs of eyes on him and he buried himself in conversation with his historian friend. Later, as dons and guests began to disperse into the warm summer night, Ichabod and Grossman, who was obviously the worse for drink, approached Zack.

‘You’re heading off to London, aren’t you, Zack? Perhaps Sir Robert could give you a lift?’

Grossman and Zack compared addresses and found they lived only three blocks from each other. The deal was swiftly done and Zack soon found himself sliding out of Oxford in the banker’s chauffeur-driven BMW. If possible, Grossman drunk was more boring than Grossman merely tipsy, and Zack had to endure another barrage of anecdotes, most of them missing a punch line and many of which he’d already heard at dinner. At one point, Zack managed, as it were, to put his oar in, mentioning that he was looking for a job in corporate finance, preferably with a good British bank.

Grossman looked at the younger man.

‘Corporate finance, eh? You’re the sort of fellow we’re always on the lookout for. I’m at Coburg’s, you know. Deputy Chief Executive.’

Zack tried to look surprised.

‘Coburg’s? Really? I’ve always so admired the bank. I was hoping …’

‘Hoping to join, eh? Well, come in for an interview. I’m sure you’ll do well.’ Grossman said, slurring his words. ‘I’m a sharp judge of character, y’know, and I’ve had my eye on you this evening.’ Zack had watched Grossman drink the best part of three bottles of wine at dinner, not to mention sherry before and port after, and had listened to him talk virtually non-stop. What Grossman was like when he didn’t have his eye on someone, Zack couldn’t imagine. ‘Besides,’ added Grossman, ‘that man Bell with the funny name –’

‘Ichabod. Ichabod Bell.’

‘Quite right. Itchy-dog Bell. Fellow told me you were one of his best ever students. I wasn’t surprised. Not a bit. I could tell you had a good head on you. Anyway, come in to Coburg’s for an interview. I’ll tell ’em to look out for you.’

And so he did. When Zack called Coburg’s, the man from personnel said, ‘Ah, yes, Grossman’s friend,’ and scheduled a day of interviews for Zack then and there. The interviews were strange, dream-like affairs. The interviewers went through the motions, but both sides knew that the important thing had already been decided. Two weeks following dinner with Grossman, Zack received an offer of employment. The post paid twenty-seven thousand pounds per annum plus a January bonus. Peanuts, of course. Less than the rent on his flat. But that wasn’t the point.

The point was he’d done it. He’d been admitted. He was a season ticket holder to the City of London, the enchanted forest where money really does grow on trees.

8

‘D’you know what Josie wants to talk about?’ asked Matthew.

‘Not me,’ said Zack. ‘Probably just wants to escape Mum for the evening. I’d go nuts in that grotty little house with Mum crying away all the time.’

‘Poor Mum. She certainly took the will terribly hard. I should visit her, but I’m working all hours at the moment.’

‘Mmm,’ said Zack, who was in between finishing at his accountancy firm and starting at Coburg’s. Despite his leisure time, he hadn’t called on his ailing mother. A silence began to grow, filled only by the rumble of traffic from Camden High Street. ‘Where’s George, d’you know?’ he said, changing the subject.

‘No, no one knows. Josie left loads of messages at his flat, but he’s either not there or not responding.’

‘I wonder what he’s up to. He’s going to have a bit of a job financing his lifestyle now.’

That was true enough. George’s playboy life had been paid for by huge dollops of cash from their father. No more cash, no more jet-setting.

‘You never know,’ said Matthew. ‘He’s probably persuaded a billionaire friend of his to give him a couple of million to tide him over. He was always good at getting cash out of Dad. Better than us.’

Zack shrugged. ‘I don’t think we need worry. George would get through a million in a matter of months.’

Both men laughed. They weren’t worried about George getting his million. Zack was the cleverest of the brothers, Matthew the most determined. George wasn’t smart and he hated work. Both brothers had always vaguely resented the ease with which George had taken cash from their father, but now it was payback time. Zack knew that Matthew was his only serious rival, and he was Matthew’s. The two men looked at each other warily. They were tense, defensive, nervous.

When the doorbell rang, Zack stood up quickly. ‘That’ll be her now. If you get the door, I’ll get her a drink.’

Matthew opened the door and found a stranger. It was Josephine alright, but as he’d never seen her. She wore a navy blue skirt with a white cotton blouse. A single gold chain was her only jewellery. Her long, dark, naturally curly hair was pulled back and pinned up. A few weeks before, Josephine had been a slim, pretty, lively girl with a passion for dance and parties. Today, she was professional, competent, unobtrusive. For maybe the first time, her mouth was tucked down, not up, at the corners.

‘Jesus Christ, Josie,’ murmured Matthew. ‘So soon?’

‘Yes, I was lucky. I got a last minute place at the Cavendish Secretarial School and I’ve been there a week now. It’s going OK.’

‘And this stuff – from M & S, I suppose?’

‘Yes. I’d never realised how much £500 could buy. I’m all set up now as you see.’

She gave a half-twirl as though to show off a party frock, but her heart wasn’t in it.

‘It’s not right, Josie. It’s not right.’

She looked away, not wanting to let Matthew see her quivering eyes.

‘I haven’t many options, have I? Besides, it’s how most girls my age get by.’

Matthew raised his arm, offering her a cuddle, but she gently pushed it away. She’d cry if he cuddled her and she wasn’t here to cry. Once inside, Josephine took a tumbler of gin and tonic with a sigh of relief. She stretched out her legs on Zack’s gleaming glass coffee table, uncomfortable beneath her brother’s dark unemotional scrutiny.

‘M & S, huh?’

‘That’s right.’

Zack just nodded. Josie saw his eyes pass the information to his brain, which stored the fact as just another item to be memorised and filed. He cut to the chase.

‘Well, Josie, are you going to reveal why you’ve got us together or shall we guess?’

‘I don’t think it should be all that hard to guess,’ she said, keeping her voice steady and reasonable. ‘Mummy’s shocked, she’s depressed. Even after a month, she’s showing no sign of improvement. I think we need to do something.’

‘She needs to get out,’ said Zack. ‘Get a job.’

‘She can’t. She can’t type any more, and secretarial work is all she’ll do.’

‘Oh, come on. We all know she could type if she wanted. She could do anything if she just pulled herself together.’

‘Zack! She’s in a bad way. She’s finding things hard.’

‘What are you suggesting? We take it in turns to sing her lullabies?’

Josie’s temper began to rise despite herself, despite her foreknowledge that Zack would be difficult.

‘I’m saying that she needs help. From all of us. Now.’

Zack snorted and threw himself back in his chair, leaving it to Matthew to ask more gently, ‘What? What did you have in mind?’

‘Mum had relied on the will to make her comfortable. Dad failed her, but we don’t have to. We can all get jobs. I’m hoping to find work as soon as I finish my course. We can all put as much as we can towards a regular income for Mum, maybe club together to get her somewhere decent to live. She’s never liked it where she is now.’

‘She’s perfectly capable of going out to work herself,’ snapped Zack.

‘How would you know? When did you last see her?’

Matthew once again sought to make peace.

‘Have you thought about taking her to the doctor’s? Trying her out on antidepressants? She probably just needs snapping out of it.’

‘I have taken her to the doctor’s, yes,’ said Josie, still taut. ‘He spent three minutes with her, then wrote out a prescription for Prozac, which stopped her from getting to sleep, then gave her nightmares. If you want her to see another doctor, then it’s a private specialist she needs, paid for by us.’

Matthew lapsed into silence. He didn’t like the thought of leaving his mum without help, but he didn’t like the idea of offering his money before Zack had offered any of his. Zack lay slumped in his chair, swilling his whisky round his tumbler, then sat forward, alert again.

‘No,’ he said.

‘No? What do you mean, no?’

‘No, Josie. I’ve got three years to make a million pounds. I’m not going to work my knackers off only to miss the target by a few quid at the end, because Mum was too lazy to go out to work for herself.’

‘It’s not laziness!’

‘What else do you call it? The moment you start giving in to these sort of people, they learn to do less and less.’

‘These sort of people, Zack? She’s –’

‘And there’s no need to worry about money. In three years’ time, we’ll see to her properly. Either one of us wins Dad’s money, in which case he’ll see her right. Or none of us wins, in which case we’ll certainly have enough between us to look after her. It’s not a problem.’ Zack looked at Matthew for his agreement, which he gave with a nod. ‘I’m sure George would agree too. Stop worrying.’

‘She needs help now.’

‘Josie, you’re out of the will anyway. You may as well use your salary to look after Mum. It’s not as though she eats much or spends anything on clothes and stuff. We’ll pay you back in three years. If there’s a shortfall, you can always mortgage the house. Christ, in three years we just won’t have any problems. We’ll send you back to school for a start, and chuck that Miss Moneypenny outfit of yours in the incinerator.’

Josephine was furious. Angry and upset. She put her drink down on the table, hands shaking badly. She stood up.

‘For your information, this Miss Moneypenny outfit is what I expect to wear when I start to earn my living. And if you think I’m going to mortgage Mum’s home on the off chance that one of you three babies wins the Lottery in the next three years then you must be nuts. And if you think that it’s OK, now that she really needs you, to ignore her completely, then you’re totally out of line.’

Zack made no answer, but contempt was written on his face in lines of white.

‘Matthew, tell him.’ Josie appealed to her brother.

Matthew sat like a five-year-old, hoping that by keeping silent he could stay out of trouble. He didn’t have Zack’s abrasive selfishness, but he didn’t have his sister’s warm-hearted sense of justice either. He swallowed, but shook his head.

‘For God’s sake, you two. She’s not just some batty old cow. She’s your mother.’

Zack sat forward and opened his mouth. The others knew what Zack was thinking. He was thinking of saying that she was a batty old cow as well as his mother. Josephine was ready to throw her tumbler at him if he said it, but Matthew beat them both to the draw, interjecting quickly: ‘Josie, of course she’s our mum. But Zack’s right, you know. It makes no sense at all for us to devote our time or money to looking after her right now, when that could mean that we lose Gradley Plant Hire and all the money held in trust. Everybody is better off if we make sure that Dad’s money comes into the family instead of going to some godawful charity.’

‘So you’ll cooperate will you? Pool the money you make at the end of three years and divide up Dad’s money into quarters?’

It was a question addressed to both of them, but Matthew deferred to Zack, and Zack’s silence was implacable.

‘And now? What happens now?’ persisted Josie.

‘Well, I can see it’s going to be tight for the next three years,’ Matthew answered. ‘It’ll be hard for all of us. But we need to think of the future. And Zack’s right, you don’t want to be a secretary for the rest of your life. You will need a way out of that, you know.’

‘I’ll need a way out of that,’ repeated Josephine distantly. ‘So the answer’s no? You won’t help? Nothing?’

‘Of course we’ll do what we can.’ Matthew looked at Zack, who was adding to his whisky and looking away. ‘But realistically it won’t be much. But we’ll do what we can.’

‘I see.’

Josephine put down her drink. Her hands had stopped shaking. She picked up a heavy bronze statuette on a polished granite base from the glass coffee table in front of her. She turned it over in her hands. The statue was of a racing car. It had been a gift from Bernard Gradley to Zack, who had never liked it, but had never thrown it away either. She looked at it. It reminded her of her father’s campaign to win allegiance with money, and of his failure to do so. Love buys love, money buys money.

She held out the statuette and dropped it. It fell heavily and landed in the dead centre of the table, shattering the glass. Two diagonal cracks running from corner to corner split it into four pieces. Half the glass slid from its mounting and crashed on to the thickly carpeted floor. The remaining bits of glass stayed sticking out, suspended. The statuette lay on the floor surrounded by debris.

‘So sorry,’ she said, and left.

9

Where was George and what was he up to? Those were questions he was asking himself right now. He was somewhere in Cornwall, he knew that much. His car was parked in a lay-by off the A30 somewhere close to Bodmin Moor. It was late evening in mid-August and George watched as the last blue light surrendered to the gathering stars.

Somewhere in the car was an insect which George wouldn’t find until it bit him. He wound his seat back as far as it would go. It wasn’t far. A Lotus Esprit is not designed for men of stocky build to camp out in, as George had by now proved many times over. But his first attempt outside in a tent had been a disaster, with a summer storm leaving him soaked and desperate and since then he had preferred the car’s cramped interior to any tent, no matter how spacious.

He closed his eyes with a sort of fantasy idea that closing his eyes would send him to sleep. It didn’t. His legs sent him a message which he mostly ignored, but it had to do with bucket seats, feather beds, and their relative merits. Somewhere outside the car, an animal screamed. George remembered seeing video footage of a puma loose on Bodmin Moor, apparently still not caught. But they couldn’t attack Lotuses, could they? He wound up the window, just in case.

As he slumped back into his seat, the insect found George, and slap around though he did, George failed to find the insect. He struggled for the light switch, found it, and swatted round aimlessly for a minute or two, using the copy of the Financial Times which lay rolled up beside him.

As the light was on and the paper in his hand, George looked again at the familiar page. A section of classified ads, all but a few of them with blue lines through them. He’d carry on with the rest tomorrow, then it would be time for the next paper and the next set of ads, and so it would be until his last dribble of cash ran out, leaving him stranded in his Lotus Esprit, too poor to afford a gallon of petrol.

Zack and Matthew might laugh about his billionaire friends, but George knew the rules of the international jet set better than they did. If you wanted to be part of it, you either had to pay your way or be young enough and pretty enough to sleep your way. George hadn’t the cash or the body for it. As soon as people found out his wallet was empty, he’d be dumped faster than last season’s clothes. He’d sooner do the dumping himself.

He threw the paper down. On his answering machine at the flat, there had been three messages from his sister and one from Kiki. He missed them both.

He turned off the light again and tried to sleep.

10

Matthew emerged on to the floor of the deserted trading room. Except for the red digital wall-clocks and the flicker of screens, the room was in darkness. Matthew turned on an Anglepoise lamp over his desk. He liked the dark and the hour of silence before the cleaners arrived at five am. He fetched a cup of black coffee and got to work.

In the five weeks since he had really got started, Matthew had his routine well developed. By the time Luigi came in with fresh coffee at seven, Matthew would have prepared five neat piles of painstakingly referenced and highlighted bundles of research. At first the piles had been a welcome luxury. They had since become little short of essential: the Saint Matthew Gospel, as Luigi put it.

The fictional lira which marked Matthew’s progress with Luigi had nudged up to nearly one dollar. In practice, Matthew knew, Luigi would vote in favour of Madison’s offering him a full-time job to start once he had completed his degree. But that wouldn’t do. He had three years to make a million, and he wasn’t going to spend one of them studying economics. Matthew needed a job and he needed it now.

Later that day, Matthew was to have an interview with Brian McAllister. The son of a Glaswegian truck driver, McAllister ruled the trading floor with quiet voice and omniscient eye. By reputation, he knew each trader’s market better than they did themselves. He was willing, as most traders were, to take large risks in search of profit. Less commonly, he was also willing to refrain from risk whenever he judged the conditions were wrong. Many people had made bigger profits than Brian McAllister, but none had made smaller losses.

McAllister’s judgement would decide Matthew’s fate, and there was no court of appeal.

Just after nine, Luigi came by his desk. ‘Matteo, where does ze lira stand today?’

Matthew pretended to check his screen. ‘Hey, Luigi, what d’you know? The lira equals one dollar exactly.’

‘And how is the Italian deficit, please?’

Matthew touched some buttons on his keyboard. A new screen flashed up. ‘Well, look at that. Rupert Murdoch’s just bought the Italian government for a zillion dollars and the deficit’s been eliminated.’

Luigi grinned. ‘Seriously, Matteo, Big Mac will ask me why you suddenly work, when before you were the most goddamn lazy prick I have ever seen. How do we know which one we’re buying?’

‘My dad died six weeks ago,’ said Matthew, who had said nothing about it earlier. ‘About five weeks ago, I realised I needed to look after myself now. So I did.’

Luigi nodded seriously. His trader’s eyes scanned Matthew’s face, looking for the truth behind his words. ‘I’m sorry, Matteo, I didn’t know.’

Luigi walked off to find Big Mac, as McAllister was known behind his back, never to his face.

Luigi’s conversation lasted perhaps five minutes. Given the number of demands on McAllister’s time, that counted as a long interview. Matthew drummed nervously on his desk and felt inside his jacket pocket to reassure himself that a certain document was still there. Luigi returned, and one by one Anders, Cristina, and Jean-François went to speak with McAllister. Matthew believed they would support him. Each of them had said to him privately that his support over the last weeks had really given them an edge in the free-for-all of the market. Their trading profits still depended on their daily judgements, but Matthew had helped them and they were grateful.

Jean-François came back. He patted Matthew on the back. ‘Allez,’ he said, and gave a wink of support.

Matthew walked over to McAllister’s office. McAllister had taken advantage of the thirty second gap between Jean-François’s departure and Matthew’s arrival to take a call from his counterpart in the Paris office. The phone call blared from a speaker on McAllister’s desk. The subject of the conversation appeared to be how the French bond markets would react to a European summit being held the following day.

McAllister saw Matthew come in and signed him to sit. Privacy was unheard of on the trading floor. Conversations were yelled across the room. Phone calls were recorded. Pierre d’Avignon, on the phone to McAllister, wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if he knew that somebody else had just come in to sit in on his call. D’Avignon asked McAllister a question, something to do with the European summit.

‘An interesting question,’ said McAllister, in his strong Scots accent. ‘I’ll get our analyst here to do some research on that point and we’ll get back to you tomorrow.’

‘OK, but it needs to be tomorrow first thing, before the markets open.’

‘Aye. First thing tomorrow.’

‘And put one of your best guys on this, eh, Brian?’ said d’Avignon. ‘We’ve got five hundred million dollars’ worth of bonds on our books at the moment, and we don’t want to make a mess.’

‘Don’t worry. You’ll have the best.’

D’Avignon hung up. McAllister looked at Matthew.

‘Got that?’

‘You want me to do the research?’

McAllister nodded.

‘Yes. No problem,’ croaked Matthew. He knew virtually nothing about the European summit which d’Avignon was on about, but if he screwed up, he could wave his job goodbye. His mouth turned dry.

‘Good. We’ll talk about your job after your conversation with d’Avignon tomorrow morning.’

Matthew was dismissed, but he continued to hold McAllister’s gaze. The Scotsman’s eyes were pale blue and piercing. It was like gazing into the eyes of God.

‘Thank you,’ said Matthew. ‘There’s just one thing I’d like to ask you.’ He paused. McAllister said nothing, waiting. God, he was intimidating. ‘I don’t want to finish my degree. The last few weeks have made me realise that I love trading. I don’t believe that completing my degree will make me a better trader. I want to work hard and I want to start now. I like Madison and I’d like to work here if I possibly can.’

Matthew paused to review the effect of his words, but McAllister’s face was as empty as granite. Matthew decided he might as well play his only trump card and drew a letter from his pocket. He gave it to the Scotsman.

‘I’ve been offered a job by Coburg’s. I don’t want to work there. I want to work here. I know as well as you do that Madison is going to wipe the floor with Coburg’s, and I want to be part of that. But above all I want to trade and I want to start now. And if that means I need to start at a second-rate firm, then I will.’

McAllister barely glanced at the photocopied letter in front of him. Matthew had pinched the letter from Zack’s flat the evening Josie smashed his coffee table. Except for a couple of initials and the name of the department, he’d hardly needed to alter it. ‘Dear Mr Gradley, We are pleased to be able to offer you a job as Assistant Manager in our Global Markets Department. We are keen that you should start with us directly, and I would ask you to confirm your start date with us as soon as possible.’ The letter continued with banalities. Matthew had photocopied the doctored original, then inspected it under a magnifying glass. He was confident that the changes were virtually undetectable.

McAllister tapped the letter lightly with his finger to indicate that Matthew should take it back.

‘Don’t write off Coburg’s,’ he said softly. ‘They’ve been around for more than two hundred years, twice as long as we have. We’ll be doing well to last that long ourselves.’

The interview was over.

11

George drove away from the little cluster of buildings. Once out of sight, he pulled out his Financial Times and put a line through another box. This was getting ridiculous. He’d try for another two weeks – three at most – then give it all up. Zack or Matthew could try to win their father’s fortune. He’d apply for a job stacking shelves. He’d make new friends, find new things to do. Maybe in time he’d go back to school and get some exam results and a proper job. He’d live the way most people lived. But for now he’d go on trying, just a little longer.

He looked back at his newspaper. Next on the list was Gissings, based in the village of Sawley Bridge up near Ilkley in Yorkshire. He phoned a number and was put through to somebody who put him through to somebody else. George explained his interest and asked if there were any documents he could have a look at. Yes, there were documents. Would he like them posted? Yes, please, said George, but it wasn’t convenient to post them to his business address at present. Perhaps they could send them to the hotel he’d be staying at – The Devonshire Arms near Skipton. That was fine. They’d send the documents out right away. Did he want to make an appointment for a site visit now? No, that was fine, he’d look through the documents first.

George switched his phone off. He was headed north anyway to view some Scottish outfit, a long shot. He’d pass by the Devonshire Arms, apologise for changing his plans and pick up the documents from a mystified receptionist. He was getting good at doing that. Just like he was getting pretty good at keeping himself pretty much respectable while living mostly in a two-seater Lotus Esprit with an engine capacity bigger than its luggage hold.

He looked back at the ad. Gissings, eh? He didn’t feel hopeful, but he didn’t feel ready to stack shelves either.

He drove off, wearily.

12

First step, gather information.

Matthew dug into the bank’s news database to get the dates of all European summits over the last ten years, then printed articles from Europe’s leading papers in the run-up to and aftermath of each summit. Then, switching to a new database, he collected bond market data around the key dates. Then, finally, he called up relevant research reports published by the major investment banks and printed about thirty reports of a few pages each. The database was charged at twenty-five dollars a sheet and he ran up a bill of a couple of thousand dollars in an hour and a half. It didn’t bother Matthew and it wouldn’t bother anyone else either. When a single trade, even a small one, can easily win or lose five thousand dollars for the bank, cost control is a game reserved strictly for losers.

By this point it was four in the afternoon and Matthew had a vast pile of paper by his desk, of which he’d read almost nothing.

Matthew worked his way swiftly through the pile. Most of it was dross, but amidst the rubbish were diamonds scattered and he needed to find them. He skimmed document after document and built a shorter stack of those he thought important.

Then he started to crunch some numbers. He printed graphs. He looked at the markets for bonds, currencies and shares. He categorised the previous summits in a dozen different ways and reran his numbers searching for a pattern.

By eleven in the evening, Matthew knew what he wanted to say. He also knew how he was going to say it and prove it to an audience much more knowledgeable than himself.

He got more coffee and started to build a presentation. His presentation had a dozen slides, five appendices containing sixty graphs and another two appendices with some of the most interesting statistics and research comments he’d unearthed. The whole document was around a hundred and twenty pages long. He stepped wearily over to the fax machine. It was one thirty in the morning. Matthew had been in the bank nigh on twenty-two hours.

He wrote out a cover page and punched d’Avignon’s number into the fax. It rang a couple of times and then started to pull the first page through the scanner. Matthew walked off to get another coffee. Something had gone wrong with the vending machine and the coffee tasted like metal. He drank it anyway.

When he came back, the fax had stopped. An error message slowly printed out. D’Avignon’s machine was out of paper. By the time anybody was in the office to refill it, it would be far too late to send the documents across. Damn. He tried a different number, of a machine he thought would be somewhere close to d’Avignon’s office. Five pages ticked their way slowly through. Then, the same result. Damn, damn, damn. It was now two o’clock, three o’clock Paris time.

Matthew considered his options briefly. They were few and far between. Matthew copied the presentation and dropped it on to McAllister’s desk with a scribbled note on the front cover. He walked downstairs and hailed a cab from the rank across the street.

‘Where you going, mate?’ asked the driver.

‘Paris,’ said Matthew, ‘rue de la Colonne.’

They made it to Paris in four hours flat, which would have been impossible but for the cabbie’s conviction that there was no speed limit on French autoroutes. Matthew kept silent about the difference between autoroutes and autobahns and snoozed in the back as the flat French countryside slipped past in the gathering dawn.

They entered Paris before rush hour and drew up outside Madison’s elegant Paris office. Matthew asked the driver to wait and dashed inside.

D’Avignon had arrived only shortly before. Mildly startled to see Matthew in person, he apologised for his empty fax machine and waved Matthew into a seat. Matthew handed over the presentation, d’Avignon called McAllister on the speaker phone, and the conference call began. Matthew led them through his work. He reckoned the discussion might last for twenty minutes all told and that he might speak for perhaps seven minutes of that. In the cab on the way across, he had run through his introduction a dozen times, until falling asleep somewhere after the turn-off to Lille.

Matthew felt confident of his conclusions. All the evidence seemed to confirm that after a few days of thinking that the end of the world had happened (or alternatively that the millennium had arrived early) the bond markets would turn their attention to something else. Matthew ran through the relevant data and summarised his conclusions. He spoke without interruption for six and a half minutes exactly. There were a couple of questions on points of detail, as McAllister and d’Avignon flipped through the charts and other material in the appendices. Neither trader challenged Matthew. After a brief discussion about how best to place the firm’s bets, d’Avignon rang off. He thanked Matthew for coming over and invited him unenthusiastically to tour the building. Matthew declined. D’Avignon looked relieved and dived off to take a call coming in from Milan. Matthew went downstairs to his waiting cab and they crept out of Paris in swelling traffic, heading north to Calais and London.

Back at his desk, Matthew came in for a bit of stick.

‘Go to Paris for breakfast but don’t even bring me back a bloody croissant,’ complained Luigi. ‘It’s a good job I tell Big Mac to fire you yesterday.’

‘Oui, but it was an expensive breakfast,’ said Jean-François. ‘I don’t think the firm pays for taxi rides outside London, so I think you pay, no, Matthieu?’

‘I don’t know if I can afford to. Big Mac still hasn’t told me if I’ve got a job.’

Matthew glanced over towards McAllister’s office to see if this was a good time to interrupt. The door was closed, and the lights were off. Luigi followed Matthew’s glance.

‘Big Mac’s away on holiday, Matteo. He only came in this morning for an hour or so. He’ll be back a week on Monday.’

Matthew had been too tired to be nervous earlier, but now that changed. Matthew stared at the empty office. It would be ten days before he got a decision. Ten days, and meantime he didn’t know if he was still in the running for his million or if he’d fallen at the first hurdle. Anxiety took its first long feed from Matthew’s stomach lining. He turned away unhappily, aimlessly. As he did so, a bagel crust flew through the air and struck him on the neck. Luigi.

‘How much longer you keep us waiting for cappuccino?’