Michael Ridpath - Free To Trade

I sat staring at my phone. This did not look good. Who else could I ring? Cash was out of the question. With a pang I thought of Cathy. But I couldn't bear to receive the same brush-off from her as I had from the others.

Claire! She would give me some time, surely.

I rang her. As soon as she heard my voice, she broke into a whisper. 'Paul. Is it true what they are saying?'

'I don't know. What are they saying?'

'That you were caught insider trading?'

At last! Someone who was direct enough to say what they were thinking.

'No, it is not true. Or at least, I wasn't actually insider trading. But it is true the TSA thinks I was. That is why I resigned.'

'Resigned? Everyone is saying you got the sack!'

'Forced to resign then.' I almost left it at that. A further denial seemed wasted breath. It seemed as though everyone accepted my guilt. In the end I quietly said, 'I didn't do anything wrong.'

'I know,' said Claire.

A small burst of relief and gratitude came over me. 'You know? How can you know?'

Claire laughed. 'You, you are the last person in the world to get involved in insider trading. You are the straightest person I know. Much too serious. Much too boring.'

'I don't deny it,' I said, my spirits lifting slightly.

Claire's tone slipped to a conspiratorial whisper. 'Tell me what happened.'

I told her all about my purchase of Gypsum shares and why I had done it. When I came to Cash's involvement, she interrupted me. 'That worm! I should have known he would have something to do with this. My God! It is incredible he is allowed to keep trading.'

She had a point there. It had sounded as though Cash was under some sort of investigation. Perhaps his days at Bloomfield Weiss were numbered, too. That was some consolation. However, I thought that if anyone could wriggle out of trouble somehow, it would be Cash.

I told her about the reaction of David Barratt and the others to my requests for help. 'Hmm, I am not surprised,' she replied. 'Everyone is talking about it. You have achieved notoriety. Even people who don't know you are chattering. I can assure you there is no chance of anyone giving you a job in a hurry.'

I reeled under the blow. That was blunt, even for her, and she realised it. 'Oh, I'm sorry, Paul. I didn't mean that,' she said quickly. 'They will forget in a month or two. You will find something.' I didn't say anything. 'Paul? Paul?'

I mumbled goodbye and put the phone down.

There it was. Staring me in the face. I was not going to get another job in the bond market. Not now. Probably not ever. Simple. Finite.

It was a truth that I had known since the evasive phone call with David Barratt, but one which I had forced to the back of my mind. I had believed that will-power alone would get me another job. But will-power could not make people forget that I was that most notorious of financial criminals, an insider trader.

It struck me as ironic that such a simple misdemeanour as the one I was supposed to have committed should be treated with such contempt by people who routinely lied and cheated against their customers, their employers, even their friends. But insider trading was different. It was contagious. The great plague of it that had ended up claiming the mastermind of the junk bond market, Michael Milken, had crept through Wall Street, slowly passing from investment banker to investment banker until almost every house in New York was diseased in some way. The remedy was easy. At the first outbreak, any diseased member should be isolated and cut off. That was what had happened to me.

The consequences were difficult to take. To trade was quite simply all I wanted to do. To trade well was my ambition. Until a week ago it was something that looked clearly within my grasp, given a couple of years of effort. No chance now.

I suppose some people drift through life happily enough without any goal. Not me. When I focus on an objective, I strive for it with all my heart. Subsume my life in it. Sure, when I finally accepted I was not going to be the fastest eight-hundred-metres runner in the world it had been hard, but I couldn't deny to myself that I had achieved a lot to get close. To be denied even a clear shot at trading was more than I could take.

The next two weeks were the worst of my adult life. I still sent off letters, and even went to a couple of interviews, but my heart wasn't in it. I knew it was a lost cause.

Depression quickly set in. A deep black depression which I had never experienced before. I was dispirited down to the bottom of my soul. It became difficult to do anything. After a day or so, I gave up running, always telling myself that one more day's rest wouldn't hurt. I tried to read novels, but couldn't concentrate. I spent a long time in bed, just staring. I went for long aimless walks round London. But the din of traffic, the exhaust fumes and the heat left me tired and jaded. The collapse of will, for one who has drawn sustenance from it for so long, is debilitating indeed.

I was also lonely. It never usually bothered me to be by myself, but now I craved someone to talk to. Someone who could help put everything into perspective. But who was there? I could hardly talk to anyone from work. I did not have the courage to admit what had happened to me to the odd scattering of friends and acquaintances I had picked up over the years. I should have done, but I didn't. And the last person on whom I could lay the burden of my troubles was my mother. I was well aware that I would soon have to instruct solicitors about buying her cottage. How would I get finance for it? Indeed, with trading now closed to me, it would be impossible for me to get a job that paid enough.

I ignored that problem, or tried to. But the longer I left it, the more it gnawed away at me. I was responsible for leaving my mother without a home; I was too feeble to do anything about it.

In my moments of loneliness, thoughts of Cathy frequently emerged. When I wished to myself that there was someone I could talk to, that someone always became her. I thought of the easy understanding we had developed in America, her sympathy and interest in my life. I needed someone to be interested in it now.

And then her rejection came back to taunt me. Her accusations that I was ruining her career, my crass pleas to her to come out to dinner with me. She would no doubt have heard about what I had done-correction, was supposed to have done. She would be thanking God that she avoided getting involved with me, and kicking herself for even considering it. A relationship with an insider trader would be no help at all for her progress up the greasy pole.

It was Thursday afternoon. I was watching athletics from Oslo on television. It was profoundly depressing, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to turn the set off. As I saw the eight hundred metres being won by a Spaniard whom I had beaten on several occasions, I asked myself yet again why I had given up. I had been so good! Why the hell had I bothered with trading? And it was too late to go back to running now. I would never be able to recapture my old form. It was all gone. There was nothing left for me to do but sit here and regret it.

I gazed round my small flat. My bronze Olympic medal mocked me from the mantelpiece. God, the flat was a mess! It was so small, it didn't take much to make it untidy. There was a big pile of dirty laundry in the corner behind the door. I really ought to take it to the launderette, I thought. No, it could wait another day. I hadn't quite run out of clean clothes.

The phone rang. It was probably one of the recruitment agencies. I had recently told them to give up searching for trading jobs, and asked them to look for a vacancy for a credit analyst instead. They had muttered about how difficult the job market was these days. I had evidently worked my way swiftly down on their list of likely placements, from near the top to near the bottom. I let the phone ring ten times before pulling myself out of my chair to go and get it.