Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

I groan and rub my eyes. ‘There is work to do,’ I say. ‘Am I the only person who cares about work?’

‘That’s a great idea,’ Jurgen says. ‘Do you think he’ll come?’

‘Of course he’ll come,’ Ish says. Bending one foot up to her knee, she begins to hop around, arms upstretched to the ceiling tiles and the fluorescent lighting. ‘Sorry, Claude!’ she declaims. ‘But no one person can own Paul! He belongs to everyone!’

‘I will go and ask him now,’ Jurgen says, and he walks away, singing to himself, ‘ Mach dir keine Sorgen, über die Dinge … ’

‘Like the air!’ Ish hops back towards her desk. ‘Like birdsong! Like sunshine!’

To my surprise, Paul accepts the invitation. Now the issue becomes making it out of the office. It has been another bad day — a very, very bad day — for Ireland on the markets. The two ailing Spanish banks have caused a panic across the whole continent, with investors scrambling to pull their funds out of any bank felt to be vulnerable — which includes all the major Irish institutions. The worst hit, Royal Irish, lost a million for almost every minute of trading, and every time I put on my coat another frantic client calls, wanting to know if the government will step in to save it. But the Minister has yet to make a statement — in fact, no one seems to know where the Minister even is.

Just after six o’clock, I am summoned upstairs by the Chief Operating Officer; exiting the lift on the seventh floor I walk straight into an enormous Garda. My mind floods with a whole new order of panic. Have we been robbed? Is the building under siege?

The secretary appears in the doorway and motions me impatiently into the corner office.

‘Ah, Claude, there you are.’ Whatever turn of events has brought a policeman into her foyer doesn’t seem to have bothered Rachael. But then, Rachael is imperturbable. No matter the time of day or state of the market, she always looks immaculate — streamlined, frictionless, like a virtual avatar of herself. Her hair is perfectly blonde, her skin perfectly white, her very presence has been buffed to a sheen as smooth as a mirror. People say she slept her way to the top, but it is literally impossible to imagine her having sex with Sir Colin or anyone else; others like to say she has a USB port instead of a vagina, and that her husband uses her to charge his phone, which seems marginally more plausible.

Four men are in her office, crowded uncomfortably on couch and chairs with cups and saucers balanced on their knees. ‘Gentlemen,’ Rachael says, ‘allow me to introduce Claude Martingale, one of our most talented analysts.’

I turn to the seated men and experience one of those cognitive shocks specific to meeting in real life someone long familiar from a screen. For the last two years, ever since the collapse of Lehman Brothers finally ignited the bonfire that was the Irish economy, the Minister for Finance has appeared almost nightly on the TV news, where he has always seemed measured, controlled, on top of the situation. In the couple of seconds it takes him to half-rise and greet me, it is frighteningly clear that this confidence is a veneer no thicker than the film of make-up applied backstage. Up close, unmediated, he seems actually to embody the country’s dire condition. Shadows devour his features, beads of moisture cling morbidly to the grey folds of his skin; his courtly, reasonable bearing is belied by great dark rings around his eyes. I had heard he was unwell: when I lean in to shake his hand I am hit by a stench so deathly I have to fight the instinct to recoil.

Rachael introduces the two men on either side of him as the Secretary General of the Department of Finance, and the Second Secretary at the Department in charge of banking policy. One is fat, one is thin; both wear glasses and the pursed, dismissive miens of civil-service lifers. Nearest the door is a fourth man, small with lugubrious eyes and a sallow complexion reminiscent of yellowing pages. He does not look Irish, but Continental — Portuguese, maybe, or Corsican. Rachael does not tell me his name, and he does not introduce himself; in fact he does not speak at all during the meeting, just remains in his corner, semi-translucent, staring at the Minister with those dolorous, unblinking eyes.

Rachael closes the door and turns to me brightly. ‘The Minister has dropped by to speak to us —’

‘Informally,’ the fat secretary interjects.

‘— to speak to us informally about the current, ah, uncertainty in the Irish banking sector.’ Rachael cannot hide her delight at this coup; she is positively glowing. ‘Minister, Claude has advised several major international investors in relation to Irish banks.’

The Minister opens his mouth into a strange gaping smile and wags it at me, like a grandfather who has had a stroke and is incapable of speaking. Then, as if this effort has caused some internal upset, he hastily brings a handkerchief to his mouth.

‘Claude, perhaps you could explain a little more what it is you do,’ Rachael prompts me.

‘Certainly,’ I reply, and begin to paint a broad picture of my role — namely, to dig through the loan books, deposit books and unexploded assets of distressed or defunct Irish banks, looking for anything ignored or undervalued that an external capital provider might take an interest in.

‘Picking off the good stuff for the vultures,’ the thin secretary translates.

I smile courteously. ‘Even the vultures have to be persuaded to invest in Ireland at the moment.’

He sniffs; it is the fatter secretary who speaks next.

‘Obviously the reason we’re here is Royal Irish,’ he says. ‘We’ve sunk a lot of money into it, quite apart from the guarantee, and at this stage we thought things would be turning around.’

‘They were turning around,’ the thin man corrects him. ‘Up until a couple of days ago. But now because of these bloody Spanish we’ve got investors pulling their money out again, and it’s starting to look like it’ll need another recapitalization.’

‘Obviously there are very good reasons for keeping the bank open,’ the fat man says, slinging a foot across his knee. ‘It’s of systemic importance, obviously. And we want to send the message to our international friends that Ireland’s financial sector is in perfect health and ready to do business. At the same time, we can’t just keep paying and paying.’

‘So I suppose what we want,’ the thin man says airily, ‘is to get a fresh perspective on the situation vis-à-vis Royal Irish. Our advisers tell us core capital ratios have been returning to acceptable levels, and that once it gets over this, as it were, hump, it should be able to return to profitability without further government assistance. We’d like to know, beyond the current situation, where you might see the bank’s position in six months, a year.’

The Minister grins mechanically and works his jaws by way of endorsing this, a blast of fetid air issuing as he does so.

All eyes are now on me, but I am not sure how to proceed. Things have not been turning around at Royal Irish; Royal Irish has been haemorrhaging money for months, first investors’ money, then taxpayers’ money. The general rule in banking is to tell the client what he wants to hear — that way, if you’re wrong, he’s less likely to hold you to blame. But to claim that Royal Irish can keep going for another week, let alone six months, would be like saying Louis XVI is alive and well and will shortly be resuming his kingly duties. It is finished as a going concern; surely they know that?

The men are waiting. I glance over to Rachael. She draws a thoughtful breath: a weirdly synthetic gesture, like a doll opening and shutting its sightless eyes. ‘Maybe you could give us a broad idea of what a return to profitability might look like,’ she says, with a meaningful nod.