Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

‘Until now.’

‘So what are you going to do, Nick?’

He looked at me, eyes pleading, what for, he didn’t seem to know. A way out, probably, a way out where he had been able to find none.

‘I don’t know.’ And I didn’t. It was too much to take in.

We sat in silence, his eyes fixed on mine. They showed a cocktail of emotions bubbling inside him: guilt, remorse, anger, fear, loneliness, self-pity. They were all there, agitated by the alcohol.

‘I need a slash,’ he said, and staggered to his feet.

I waited for him. The house was quiet, save for the owl hooting outside, and the scarcely audible tick of a clock on the mantelpiece. Leonard had ground to a halt. I sat immobile trying to sort it all out in my mind. How could Jamie, who had been such a good friend over all these years, have done this? To me. To himself. It was absurd. Incredible.

A thought drifted through my mind, like a cold gust of air, that made me physically shiver. It wasn’t absurd. It had happened. And, knowing Jamie as I did, I could see how. Jamie was ambitious, and he liked to take risks. And up till now they’d always worked. He was charming, intelligent, hard-working, the probabilities fell his way. He was lucky. If he could land Francisco’s account, and others like it, he’d build up his own business, get that million-dollar bonus, who knows, maybe even become another Ricardo one day. To him, money was money. The lives ruined and ended by the international drugs trade were an abstraction about which fuzzy intellectuals like me might worry, but not Jamie. He wouldn’t get caught. Not Jamie.

The same with Luciana. He could seduce Ricardo’s wife and get away with it. No one would catch him. Not Jamie.

But he had been caught. By me. And what was I going to do about it?

I heard Jamie come back into the room. I turned. The glass slipped from my fingers as I saw what he was carrying.

A shotgun.

He walked over to where he had been sitting, and swung the barrel towards me. His eyes were staring straight at me. The emotion that had been brewing in them seemed to have frozen into a fixed intensity. God, he’s going to shoot me, I thought.

‘Jamie. I’m your friend. Let me help you,’ I said.

He raised the gun towards me, hesitated, then swung it back towards his face.

‘No!’ I shouted.

But he pulled the trigger.

Isabel and I were sitting on one of the benches in Cabot Square, at the foot of the great white tower. It was a warm day, but not hot. Bankers milled about in shirt sleeves, and couriers in T-shirts and shorts. The sun shone yellow and silver off the water lapping all around us. Construction equipment clanked and ground in the distance.

It had been a horrible three days. The mess. The police. The questions. And then Kate. Kate hysterical, angry, guilty. Blaming me, blaming Jamie, but most of all blaming herself. I felt powerless. I couldn’t comfort her, no one could, but at least I was there. Oliver remained at her sister’s house, thank God, but he knew something was very wrong. One day, I thought with a mixture of dread and sadness, he would find out what.

I felt guilty leaving, but I had to do it, I needed to do it. And it was so good to see Isabel. She held me in her arms for a long time, and then suggested we walk down to Canary Wharf along the river-bank. I talked about Jamie, tentatively, exploring the swirl of emotions let loose by his death, and she listened. It helped.

We sat looking up at the great white tower. ‘I can imagine what’s going on up there now,’ Isabel said. ‘Celebrations. The market’s up. Ricardo owns the firm.’

‘Do you wish you were there?’ I asked.

‘I’m ashamed to admit it after all that’s happened. But kind of.’

‘I can’t believe he did it. That he won.’

‘He always wins.’

‘I know.’ I turned to her. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I’ve been talking a lot with my father. He says the takeover bid for Dekker Ward made him realize that Banco Horizonte should have an international operation. He wants to start one in London. And he wants me to run it.’

‘Are you going to do it?’ I asked her.

‘I think so. It would be a chance to do investment banking my way. It would only be a small operation to start with, but I could make it work well.’

‘It’s a good idea.’

‘What about you? What are you going to do? Are you going to try to find another job in the City?’

‘No way. Not after what happened to Jamie. And what nearly happened to me. Pushkin beckons. I’m going to finish that bloody thesis. Actually, I’m quite looking forward to it.’ I sighed. ‘But I’ll need to earn some money while I’m doing it. I might try to get a job teaching Russian at a private school somewhere. Maybe coach rugby as well. I don’t know.’

‘Would that be in London?’ she asked.

‘If I can find a job here,’ I said. ‘But that might be difficult. I could end up anywhere.’

‘That would be a shame,’ Isabel said.

‘Yes, it would.’

We sat in silence. Isabel stared up at the great tower in front of us. ‘You could stay in London with me. At my flat. I’m planning to move back in tomorrow.’

I smiled at her, but shook my head. ‘I can’t be your kept man.’

‘Oh, Nick, don’t be so proud!’ Isabel paused a moment. ‘But I can understand your pride. God knows I’ve spent most of my life trying not to live off my father. In fact, I spent so much time doing that I didn’t realize how much he loved me.’

She moved closer to me, and squeezed my hand.

‘You do realize that I love you?’

My heart leaped. ‘Do you?’ I said.

She nodded. ‘Well, then?’

It was what I had wanted to hear for so long. But I still didn’t know what I was going to do. Living off Isabel just didn’t seem right.

‘Well, that means that I want to be with you,’ she continued. ‘So if I have to go and follow you to some little town in the middle of nowhere, and be a schoolmaster’s...’ she hesitated ‘... girlfriend, I’ll do it.’

I was stunned. The thought of Isabel coming with me hadn’t occurred to me.

For a moment I imagined that life together. But it wasn’t right either. ‘No, Isabel,’ I said, stroking her hair. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to do that.’

She lifted her head up to me and smiled. ‘You don’t have to ask. I want to be with you. If that’s the only way I can do it, so be it.’

I knew she was serious. She absolutely meant it.

‘But that doesn’t make any sense,’ I protested. ‘You’re going to be doing something you really enjoy. Something you’re good at. I wouldn’t want you to give it up for me.’

We sat in silence, both of us wrestling with the problem. I didn’t know what the solution was but I did know that, whatever happened, I wanted to be with Isabel.

She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Look, Nick,’ she said. ‘What you really want to do is finish that Ph.D., isn’t it?’

I nodded.

‘Well, why don’t you finish it? You can live in my flat rent free. Get a job in a bar, or something, so you can afford to pay for your own cornflakes. I know you. You’re cheap enough. You can get by on virtually nothing.’

Her face was full of enthusiasm, of optimism for the life ahead of us. She was right. That would work. That would work very well.