Майкл Ридпат - Fatal Error

‘I tell you, that’s more than I did at Gurney Kroheim in the last year,’ I said. ‘But I couldn’t believe that bullshit you gave him at first! People aren’t going to fall for that, Guy.’

Guy smiled. ‘Precisely. He was expecting bullshit, so I gave it to him. Then he had a chance to see through it and I could make the real story more credible.’

‘Wasn’t that a bit risky?’ I said. ‘Don’t we want him to think he can trust us?’

‘Oh, he’ll trust us now. But remember what he’s looking to us for. He wants us to talk the talk. He can’t do that. I wanted to show him that we can do his bullshit for him. And it worked, didn’t it?’

‘It did. Not bad.’

‘There are some advantages to an actor’s training.’

‘So I see.’ It was clear that Guy’s finely honed skills in manipulating people were going to come in handy in the months ahead.

Guy slowed as he spied a police car on the inside lane.

‘You know,’ I said, ‘at some point soon we’ve got to talk about money.’

‘Money?’

I leaned forward and turned the Gallagher brothers down. ‘Yes. Like, how much of it do we have?’

‘I’ve got zip in my account. I think Owen’s got about thirty k left in his.’

I winced. ‘Which he’s willing to give to Gaz?’

‘Absolutely. Owen’s willing to put everything he’s got into this. We both are. In fact we both have. Owen’s already put over twenty thousand in.’

‘And you?’

‘Well, as you can guess, I had less. But that’s all gone too. What about you?’

‘I think I can put in forty thousand.’

Guy slowed a fraction, and turned to me. ‘Forty? Is that all? Come on, Davo, if you’re in, you’re in. You can’t keep nest eggs on one side.’

‘Forty thousand is all of my savings. Or nearly all. It will leave me with a few thousand to get through the next few months. I told you I wasn’t seeing any of the big bonuses at Gurney Kroheim. And my place in Notting Hill is mortgaged up to the hilt.’

‘OK, Davo, I believe you,’ said Guy. ‘And the forty is good. Very good.’

‘But we need more money.’

‘Right.’ Guy slowed as he entered the slip road off the motorway. The traffic thickened.

‘What about your father?’

Guy shook his head. ‘No.’

‘You mean “no you won’t ask him”, or “no he’d say no”?’

‘I mean both.’

‘You’ve got to try.’

‘I can’t, Davo. I’ve asked him for money so many times in the past. At first he used to give it to me. I think he liked the idea of me having a good time. Plus he felt guilty about what happened in France. Neither of us really got over that, as you know.’

Guy drove on in silence, embroiled in his own thoughts. I didn’t interrupt him; France was a topic I wanted to stay well clear of.

Then he came back to the present. ‘Dad paid for my flat in London, he paid for drama school, he paid for me to go to Hollywood. Remember the Cessna I used to fly? Golf Juliet? He paid for that. And there’s all kinds of other stuff.’

‘But this is different.’

‘That’s the point. This is different. This time I’ll use that money properly. But I’ve fed him so many stories over the years, I don’t want this to be another one. If I tell him I’m going to start an internet company, he’ll laugh in my face. Worse than that, he won’t even laugh. He’ll just look disappointed.

‘And I wouldn’t blame him. I know I’ve pissed away the last few years. Sure I’ve had a good time, but I’ve never actually achieved anything at all. I used to think Dad was cool because he knew how to have fun. But at least he’d earned the money to spend. He’d done something. I haven’t. Until now. But it’s all going to change, you’ll see. No drink. No women. I know I can make something out of Ninetyminutes, Davo. But I’m going to have to do it without my father.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘If you’re sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Have you tried anyone else? Friends? Contacts? Relations? Your mother?’

‘I have. Lots of them. It’s humiliating. The truth is, they all think I’m a loser. Just like you did when I first told you about it in the Dickens Inn. At least you listened in the end. Most people don’t. Anyway, any of them that would be willing to give me money without much chance of ever seeing it again have already done it.’

‘What about Torsten Schollenberger?’

‘Torsten’s worth a try. I haven’t seen him for a while, but he’s always up for a night on the town. And his father’s loaded. I’ll go to Hamburg and give it a whirl.’

‘Can’t do any harm.’

‘But what about venture capitalists?’ Guy said. ‘Won’t they be falling over themselves to get into this deal?’

‘I doubt it. At least not yet. I think they’ll think the same as Gaz did at first. Two bullshitters with nothing.’

‘But you said the plan was good?’

‘The plan is good. And as soon as we get back to your flat I’ll make it better. But it’s too early to go to them yet. They’ll want to see a website with real people visiting it. Lots of real people.’

‘We’re going to need some money from somewhere,’ said Guy. ‘Once we go to the next stage with the web consultants, we’re going to have to pay out real cash. And when we hire people we’ll need an office. And we’ll need money for the marketing campaign. TV advertising, that sort of thing.’

‘I think we’re probably going to have to start slower than that, Guy,’ I said.

Guy slammed his hand down on the steering wheel. ‘No! We have to move fast. If we start slow, we’ll end up nowhere. We have to start in the lead and move ahead quickly enough to stay there.’

I frowned. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’

I had never worked so hard in my life. My social life ended, I had no time for flying, I scarcely watched any TV. Every morning I arrived at Guy’s flat before eight. I walked from the tube station opposite the Tower of London, alongside Tower Bridge and St Katherine’s Dock to Wapping High Street, passing the grim faces of suited bankers on their way in to the City sweatshops. Guy was already at work when I arrived, but Owen didn’t emerge from his bedroom until about eleven.

For the first couple of days I found his hulking silent presence intimidating, but I soon got used to him. He preferred to communicate by e-mail rather than speech. Sometimes Guy and I would discuss something for half an hour, only to get back to work and find an e-mail waiting for us from Owen giving his views on the matter. Very strange. But it was quite possible to work a few feet away from Owen all day and ignore him completely, and he liked it that way.

He was making good progress on the architecture of the website. But, as Guy tacitly recognized, Owen had a people problem, so normally either Guy or I would accompany him to meetings. I quickly began to gain a basic understanding of the various components that would make up our website: the host servers lodged in fireproof, bombproof, high-security premises, the internet connections, the routers, the proxy servers, the firewalls, the databases. At this stage, it was all fairly straightforward, but once we started selling stuff over the web it would become much more complicated fast. Owen was wise to look ahead.

I spent a lot of time on the finances. One moment I would be worrying about whether the revenue in year five should be £120 million or £180 million. The next I would be figuring out how to save a few quid on printer toner. Guy had picked up a lot about internet businesses in a short time, but the money side had passed him by. I bought a bookkeeping software package and laboriously typed strings of figures into it. I set up files and simple procedures. I opened a company bank account. And I put a lot of thought into company structure, who owned what proportion of how many shares, how much to keep back for future key employees and how to value the company now and in the future.