Alan Glynn - The Dark Fields aka Limitless

The apartment was on the fourth floor, but the first thing that caught your attention as you stepped into the main hall was a marble staircase sweeping majestically up to what had to be the fifth floor. The ceilings were very high, and decorated with elaborate plaster-work, and there were friezes around the edges which took your eyes gradually downwards to the large, gilt-framed paintings on the walls.

If the elevator-car was the confessional box, the apartment itself was the whole cathedral.

Van Loon led me across the hallway and into what he called ‘the library’, which is exactly what it was – a dark, book-lined room with Persian rugs, an enormous marble fire-place and several red leather couches. There were also lots of expensive-looking ‘pieces’ of fine French furniture about the place – walnut tables you wouldn’t ever put anything on and delicate little chairs you wouldn’t ever sit in.

‘Hi, Daddy.’

Van Loon looked around, slightly puzzled. He obviously hadn’t expected anybody to be in here. On the far side of the room, barely visible against a wall of leather-bound books, there was a young woman holding open a large volume in her two hands.

‘ Oh ,’ Van Loon said, and then cleared his throat. ‘Say hello to Mr Spinola, darling.’

‘Hello Mr Spinola, darling.’

The voice was quiet but assured.

Van Loon clicked his tongue in disapproval.

‘ Ginny. ’

I felt like saying to Van Loon, That’s OK, I don’t mind your daughter calling me ‘darling’. In fact, I kind of like it.

My second erotic charge of the evening had come from Virginia Van Loon, Carl’s nineteen-year-old daughter. In her younger and more vulnerable years, ‘Ginny’ had spent quite a bit of time on the front pages of the daily tabloids for substance abuse and poor taste in boyfriends. She was Van Loon’s only child by his second wife, and had quickly been brought to heel by threats of disinheritance. Or so the story had gone.

‘Look, Ginny,’ Van Loon said, ‘I’ve got to go and get something from my office, so I want you to entertain Mr Spinola here while I’m gone, OK?’

‘Of course, Daddy.’

Van Loon turned to me and said, ‘There are some files I want you to have a look at.’

I nodded at him, not having a clue what he was talking about. Then he disappeared and I was left standing there, peering across the dimness of the room at his daughter.

‘What are you reading?’ I said, trying not to remember the last time I’d asked someone that question.

‘Not reading exactly, I’m looking something up in one of these books Daddy bought by the yard when he moved in here.’

I edged over to the centre of the room in order to be able to see her more clearly. She had short, spiky blonde hair and was wearing trainers, jeans and a pink sleeveless top that left her midriff exposed. She’d had her belly-button pierced and was sporting a tiny gold hoop that glistened occasionally in the light as she moved.

‘What are you looking up?’

She leant back against the bookcase with studied abandon, but the effect was spoilt somewhat by the fact that she was struggling to keep the enormous tome open, and balanced, in her hands.

‘The etymology of the word ferocious .’

‘I see.’

‘Yeah, my mother’s just told me that I have a ferocious temper, and I do – so, I don’t know, to cool down I thought I’d come in here and check out this dictionary of etymology.’ She hiked the book up for a second, as though displaying it as an exhibit in a court room. ‘It’s a strange word, don’t you think? Ferocious .’

‘Have you found it yet?’ I nodded at the dictionary.

‘No, I got distracted by feckless .’

‘ Ferocious literally means “wild-eyed”,’ I said, moving around the biggest of the red leather couches in order to get even closer to her. ‘It comes from a combination of the Latin word ferus , which means “fierce” or “wild”, and the particle oc -, which means “looking” or “appearing”.’

Ginny Van Loon stared at me for a second and then slammed the book closed with a loud thwack .

‘Not bad, Mr Spinola, not bad,’ she said, trying to suppress a grin. Then, as she struggled to get the dictionary back into its place on the shelf behind her, she said, ‘You’re not one of Daddy’s business guys, are you?’

I thought about this for a second before answering. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I am. We’ll see.’

She turned around again to face me and in the brief silence that followed I was aware of her eyeing me up and down. I became uncomfortable all of a sudden and wished that I’d gotten around to buying another suit. I’d been wearing this one every day for quite some time now and had begun to feel a bit self-conscious in it.

‘Yeah, but you’re not one of his regular guys?’ She paused. ‘And you don’t…’

‘What?’

‘You don’t look too comfortable… dressed like that.’

I looked down at my suit and tried to think of something to say about it. I couldn’t.

‘So what do you do for Daddy? What service do you provide?’

‘Who says I provide a service?’

‘Carl Van Loon doesn’t have friends, Mr Spinola, he has people who do things for him. What do you do?’

None of this – strangely enough – came across as snotty or obnoxious. For a girl of nineteen, she was breathtakingly self-possessed, and I felt compelled simply to tell her the truth.

‘I’m a stock-market trader, and I’ve been very successful recently. So I’m here – I think – to provide your father with some… advice .’

She raised her eyebrows, opened her arms and did a little curtsey, as if to say voilá .

I smiled.

She reverted to leaning back against the bookcase behind her, and said, ‘I don’t like the stock market.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because it’s so profoundly un interesting a thing to have taken over so many people’s lives.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘I mean, people don’t have drug-dealers any more, or psychoanalysts – they have brokers . At least with getting high or being in analysis, it was about you – you were the subject, to be mangled or untangled or whatever – but playing the markets is like surrendering yourself to this vast, impersonal system . It just generates and then feeds off… greed …’

‘I-’

‘… and it’s not as if it’s your own individual greed either, it’s the same greed as everyone else’s. You ever been to Vegas, Mr Spinola? Ever seen those big rooms with the rows and rows of slot machines? Acres of them? I think the stock market today is like that – all these sad, desperate people planted in front of machines just dreaming of the big score they’re going to make.’

‘Surely that’s easy for you to say.’

‘Maybe so, but it doesn’t make it any less true.’

As I was trying to formulate an answer to this, the door opened behind me and Van Loon came back into the room.

‘Well, Eddie, did she keep you entertained?’

He walked briskly over to a coffee table in front of one of the couches and threw a thick folder of papers on to it.

‘Yes,’ I said, and immediately turned back to look at her. I tried to think of something to say. ‘So, what are you doing, I mean… these days?’

‘These days.’ She smiled. ‘Very diplomatic. Well, these days I suppose I’m a… recovering celebrity?’

‘OK, sweetheart,’ Van Loon said, ‘enough. Skedaddle. We’ve got business to do here.’