Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

There was a note of anguish in Kate’s voice. I knew the answer. I had played rugby with Jamie. He was one of the most competitive people I had ever come across. And he never gave up. If he had decided to make his fortune at Dekker, there was nothing that Kate or I could do to change his mind.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I really admire what you did.’

‘What? You mean resigning?’

She nodded, looking straight ahead, her coffee mug half an inch from her lips.

‘I had to. I didn’t have any choice.’

‘That’s what I mean.’

She turned to me and smiled her warm friendly smile. The sun shone off her short brown hair. She was wearing a white T-shirt and a long cotton skirt, light summer clothes that gently rested on the soft roundness of her body.

Jamie didn’t deserve her.

So I stayed with Kate and Jamie. I spent a couple of days sorting out my flat. This involved talking to letting agents, getting a plumber in to fix the boiler, tidying up, packing, and hiring a van for a morning to move my stuff, eighty per cent of which was books. The agents were optimistic that they would find a tenant at a rent that would almost cover the mortgage.

I began work again on my thesis. I had thought that resurrecting the missing chapters would be desperately tedious, but actually it wasn’t. I could remember quite well what I had written, and although I needed to dig around in my notes a lot, even that I enjoyed. And the thesis was taking better shape second time round. But I hadn’t made adequate notes of all the references I needed. For these I would have to spend a couple of days at the School of Russian Studies’ library in London. Most of the rest I could do from Dockenbush Farm.

It was a very pleasant place to work, especially in May. There was a guest room at the top of the house. I fixed up a table and chair in front of the window, which supported the brand new Apple Mac I had bought in anticipation of insurance money. The view was over the top of the apple trees to a couple of fields of young barley and a low wooded hill beyond. It was idyllic. I worked a full day, eight till eight, with an hour off for lunch with Kate and Oliver. I was able to throw myself into Pushkin’s world and forget my own. Ricardo, Eduardo and Dekker were still there, but they seemed a long way away.

The only reminder was Jamie, who brought with him the smell of Dekker as he returned each evening. It soon wore off: he didn’t want to talk about it; neither did Kate nor I. The atmosphere in the house had improved since their argument on my arrival. We had fun in the evenings: we stayed up late drinking and talking. It felt almost like a holiday.

I phoned the police station in Kentish Town to see how they were getting on in solving Crime Number 1521634/E. I wasn’t surprised to hear that they had got nowhere. None of the stolen goods had turned up. They had interviewed Eduardo, who had denied all knowledge of the burglary, and they had been unable to find any connection between him and it, apart from my suspicions.

I thought intermittently about Isabel, rather than constantly. I felt guilty about this, although I realized it was probably a good thing. Because when I did think of her, I felt anxious, guilty, worried, uncertain, angry. We had spent so few days truly together, and it had been so far away. I kept on asking myself whether the relationship would have worked, and I kept on telling myself it would. Very well. And then I got angry that I’d been prevented from finding out.

I phoned Luís to see if there was any news. He was pleased to hear from me. He said he had introduced KBN, a large Dutch bank with good Brazilian connections, to Humberto Alves, and suggested they talk about favela financing. It would take a couple of months to resurrect the deal, but Humberto was confident something would come out of it. I was glad Ricardo hadn’t been enraged for nothing.

‘No news of Isabel?’ I asked.

There was a heavy silence. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’

‘Have the police found anything yet?’

‘No.’ He paused. I let the silence hang there. ‘She’s still alive, you know. They haven’t found a body yet. If she was dead, they would have found her. I know she’s alive. I can feel it.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ I said. And I had to believe he was.

One evening, in my second week at Dockenbush Farm, Dekker intruded. Jamie was tense when he returned home, and this time the tension didn’t leave after the first glass of wine. It was time for our taboo to be broken.

‘What’s up?’ asked Kate.

‘Things aren’t good at work.’

‘What is it?’

Jamie glanced at me. ‘Nick’ll probably love this. I think we’ve got big problems. The market’s been in free-fall all last week, and it looks like it’s continuing this week.’

‘What happened?’ I asked. I had deliberately stopped reading the Latin American news in the papers.

‘Mexico is up shit creek. Banks are going bust all over the place, the government has a huge debt-refinancing burden to deal with this year, and everyone’s scared.’

‘And Dekker is still long that two billion Mexican deal they led last month?’

‘Yes, that, and a lot more besides. Mexico is off twenty points and Ricardo keeps buying more. You see, his theory is that the US bailed out Mexico in nineteen ninety-five, and they’ll do it again. As far as he’s concerned, it’s a great opportunity to buy into a panic at the bottom. He’s got extra funding from Chalmet, you know, the Swiss bank that owns twenty-nine per cent of us. We have enough Mexican paper to fill the entire Canary Wharf tower.’

‘Exactly how much is that?’

Jamie winced. ‘We’re long four billion of Mexico, and two billion of other stuff.’

‘Jesus! What happened? Is Ricardo losing his nerve?’

‘Ricardo isn’t. The US Congress is. Have you heard of the Pinnock Bill?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a new piece of legislation that will require Congress to approve any emergency-aid package above a certain size. It’s specifically designed to prevent the US government bailing out Mexico again.’

‘Will it get through? Won’t the President veto it?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. There are deals within deals to be done on this one. Let’s just say that it has made Mexico’s situation more uncertain. Some of the Bradys are down in the thirties.’

Whew! I remembered they were trading in the sixties and seventies a month before. ‘So, no bonus this year?’

Jamie sighed. ‘It’s worse than that. Our capital was one and a half billion dollars at the beginning of this year. At today’s prices our losses are bigger than that now. Technically we’re insolvent. Of course, all the losses are unrealized. And no one outside the group knows about it, not even Lord Kerton. There’s still a chance that the market can bail us out. But until then, we’re relying on money from Chalmet and creative accounting.’

Jamie was right. I was pleased. But I did my best not to show it. He was worried. He didn’t want Dekker to disappear before he had received his first truly fat bonus.

But when I sat down to work the next morning, I found I couldn’t concentrate. The notes that had so absorbed me yesterday now lay spread out on the desk in front of me. My eyes were drawn to the window, and the apple trees below.

So Dekker were in deep shit? Great! My only regret was that I hadn’t put them there. I did feel slightly sorry for Jamie and some of the others who stood to lose their bonuses after all the work they had put in to get them. But Jamie was lucky enough to have Kate. What did he want with all that money?

Dekker would probably wriggle out somehow. Prices of Mexican bonds would bounce. Who knows, maybe Dekker would end up making a fortune instead of losing it? But right now they were weak, vulnerable. If I wanted my revenge, now was the time.