Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

‘Good question. I don’t know the answer.’ Actually, I could guess at why Isabel hadn’t been killed, especially if Ricardo was involved in the operation in some way. But I didn’t want to tell Luís about his daughter’s affair with Ricardo if I could help it. I knew she wouldn’t want me to. ‘For some reason they wanted us to believe she was dead. That’s why they dropped the ransom so suddenly, and didn’t respond to the proof-of-life question. But they obviously decided to keep her alive. Thank God.’

‘Do you have proof of all this?’ asked Nelson.

‘No, I don’t, but it all adds up. What do you think, Luís?’

Luís rubbed his chin. ‘I think you might be right. What you say makes sense.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Francisco? No. I mean, I’ve met him once or twice but we’ve never done business together.’

‘What does he do? All I know is he’s some kind of financier.’

‘His father is a senator, and so was his grandfather. His elder brother runs a contracting company that makes good profits from government contracts. But in Brazil, that’s normal.’

‘And Francisco himself?’

‘He made a lot of money in the eighties through offshore investment companies. It was easy, and very profitable. A lot of people did it. It involved currency speculation against the various government exchange-rate programmes. It had to be offshore to avoid exchange controls.’

‘By offshore, do you mean Panama?’ I asked. I remembered Tony Hempel and International Trading and Transport (Panama) Ltd.

‘Panama, certainly. And the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, even Miami. People made a lot of money. Then many of them lost it all.’

‘How?’

‘The Real Plan. It was introduced in nineteen ninety-four, and linked the new currency, the real, to the dollar. Interest rates were high, and for the first time inflation was under control. The easy money was over. Banks and finance companies went bankrupt all over the place.’

‘But not Francisco?’

Luís shrugged. ‘Not as far as I’ve heard. It looks as if he diversified into real estate and commodities trading. And he is supposed to deal with the narco-traffickers. If they bankrolled him, he would be OK.’

Luís paused. His mouth tightened. ‘If that bastard has harmed my daughter, I’ll kill him,’ he whispered.

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Cordelia.

‘Tell him to give my daughter back!’ growled Luís. It was as though the anger he had felt at the loss of his daughter was emerging, now that he had someone to direct it against.

‘What will you say to him?’ asked Nelson.

‘I’ll tell him he’s the son of a whore,’ said Luís, reddening. ‘I’ll tell him that if he doesn’t give my daughter back I will tear off his...’ he searched for the English word ‘... testicles and shove them down his throat.’ Luís’s chest was heaving as he said this. The control he had shown over the last few weeks was finally in danger of breaking down.

‘I don’t think that will work,’ said Nelson, quietly.

‘Why not?’ Luís glared at him.

‘Because Francisco will deny he has Isabel,’ said Nelson. ‘And we have no proof. So he won’t let her go, and we won’t know where she is. On the other hand, it will warn him that we have figured out what he’s up to, and he and whoever are his accomplices will be able to cover their tracks.’

Luís stood up from his chair, and began pacing up and down. We all watched him in silence. He was breathing heavily, trying to regain control. Eventually he stopped and turned to Nelson. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. This is not the time for anger. This is the time to be clear-headed. So what can we do?’

‘Find out a bit more about Francisco,’ I suggested. ‘What he’s up to now. Who he deals with. If he does deal with drug gangs, which ones.’

‘I can check up on that,’ said Luís.

‘I’ll ask my police contacts,’ said Nelson. ‘If he is close to these guys, they will know.’

‘And what about the kid who stabbed me?’ I asked. ‘If that was organized by a drug gang, might there be rumours in the favelas ?’

‘Possibly,’ said Nelson. ‘I can ask about that as well.’

‘So can I,’ Cordelia said. ‘My kids run all over the city. Normally I’d hate to ask them those kinds of questions, but in this case...’

Luís looked at us over his glasses, his face finely balanced between desperation and hope. ‘Well, at least we can do something now.’

Luís and I sat out on the balcony overlooking the bay. I was drinking a beer, he was drinking water.

‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper this morning,’ he said.

‘It’s understandable.’

He sighed. ‘It’s been a hard six weeks.’ His deep voice was heavy with the fatigue of waiting and hoping. ‘I always believed she was alive, but it was fantastic to hear from Zico again. I’m just worried that if we don’t get her out by next Wednesday...’

‘We’ll find her.’

‘That soon?’

I cleared my throat. Now was the time to try out my idea. ‘There is a way that we might be able to buy ourselves more time.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘You remember that you said Banco Horizonte was beginning to think about expanding overseas?’

‘Did I say that?’

‘Yes, I think so. Is it true?’

‘Well, yes. We’re thinking about setting up operations in the other Mercosul countries, perhaps Argentina or Uruguay.’

‘What about Dekker?’

‘Buying Dekker Ward, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

Luís creased his forehead. ‘It’s an idea. But no Brazilian bank has bought a major European firm before.’

‘You could probably afford it. Bloomfield Weiss are only offering Kerton ten million pounds.’

‘Yes, we could afford it,’ he said carefully. ‘And it would be a great strategic fit. We’d become the premier investment bank in South America. But the problem is the bond portfolio. From what you’ve told me, it’s huge and it’s heavily underwater. You’d need to be a Bloomfield Weiss to trade your way out of that. We just don’t have the capital.’

I was disappointed. ‘So you couldn’t make a bid just to delay things?’

Luís hesitated. ‘We could, but I don’t think Lord Kerton would listen. It wouldn’t be credible. He’d know we couldn’t take on the bond positions. He’d think we were just playing for time, and accept the Bloomfield Weiss bid instead.’

My heart sank. ‘Well, anyway, let me get some of the information on Dekker, and see what you think.’

I disappeared inside, and returned with my copies of the Bloomfield Weiss documents on Dekker.

‘I’m not sure you should be letting me see these,’ Luís said.

‘Why not? If there’s any way they can help to save Isabel, I’ll use them. And I’m not impressed by rules made up by one shark to help it swallow another.’

Luís grinned and studied the papers. I looked out over the bay. It was almost the middle of the Brazilian winter, and there was a soft, cool thickness to the air as it blew in from the sea. The temperature was cold by Rio standards, but pleasant by mine. So although it was a Saturday, the beach wasn’t crowded, but there were still the games of volleyball, beach football, and that skilful hybrid of the two that so fascinated me. Towards the horizon the familiar cluster of half-domed islands lurked low in the sea, which shimmered in the weakening late-afternoon sunlight.

‘You know, there is a way,’ he said at last.

‘What’s that?’

‘KBN, the big Dutch bank. They’re the people who I introduced to Humberto Alves to resurrect the favela deal. They’re one of the biggest players in the emerging bond markets. They could handle the Dekker bond portfolio.’